Dictionary

underdraw en · VERB

Pronunciation

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Etymology

From Middle English underdrawen, equivalent to under- + draw.

Meanings

1. (transitive) To cover or line the underside of (a floor or roof) with plasterwork, boarding or other such treatment.
   • He has the whole of the room underdrawn, with the exception of two bays at one end; he admits plenty of air by the windows in the roof into the triangular shaped space formed by the roof and the underdrawing; 1876, Great Britain. HM Factory Inspectorate, Factories and Workshops, page 37:
   • The [roof] had never been underdrawn, its entire anatomy lay bare to an inquiring eye, except where a frame of wood laden with oatcakes, and clusters of legs of beef, mutton and ham, concealed it. 1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter I, in Wuthering Heights: […], volume I, London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […], →OCLC, page 6:
2. To take or draw less than one needs or is entitled to.
   • You say for month and months you had been underdrawing? — Always underdrawing and giving up every month. Whatever we drew the officer signed an indent for and we gave up a surplus. 1906, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Parliamentary Papers: 1850-1908 - Volume 57:
3. (transitive) To represent inadequately in an artistic depiction, or in words.
4. To sketch a work of art in chalk, pencil, or other temporary medium prior to painting, inking, or otherwise making the final work.
   • Here was the warrant (or at least a justification) not just for Steig's drawings of people as bodily symptoms but, more important, for his abandoning underdrawing in pencil prepartory to inking in a drawing. 2005, Iain Topliss, The Comic Worlds of Peter Arno, William Steig, Charles Addams and Saul Steinberg, page 108:

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