Meaning

3 senses
  1. The underside of an animal.

    We identified the species of the snake by its blue-grey underbelly.

    the soft belly or underside of an animal's body

  2. The underside of any thing.

  3. (figuratively)The side which is not normally seen, normally a dark, immoral place.

    The area by the canal is the underbelly of town – not something you’d see in the guidebooks.

    dunkle Seite, Schattenseite, Unterseite

Examples

7 sentences
  1. Does Boston have a seedy underbelly?

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  2. Each manta ray has been placed in a category depending on its unique underbelly markings.

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  3. Yanni knows the underbelly of Algiers very well.

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  4. This is where you'll find Boston's seedy underbelly.

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  5. Yanni left Mila's quiet life to enter Algiers' criminal underbelly.

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Translations

2 languages
Deutsch
By meaning 1
side which is not normally seen:

Origin

From under- + belly.

From under- + belly.

Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Forms

plural: underbellies
Singularunderbelly
Pluralunderbellies

regular

Synonyms

1 synonyms
Close in meaning
  • the soft belly or underside of an animal's body:underbody

Word family

2 related words

See also

neighbours in the dictionary
underbelly — meaning, examples, forms, synonyms | Krumeto