Underbelly
//ˈʌn.dəˌbɛl.i// noun
noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 The underside of an animal.
"We identified the species of the snake by its blue-grey underbelly."
- 2 the quality of being weak or unprotected wordnet
- 3 The underside of any thing.
"A jolt told me that the Nautilus had bumped the underbelly of the Ice Bank, still quite thick to judge from the hollowness of the accompanying noise."
- 4 the soft belly or underside of an animal's body wordnet
- 5 The side which is not normally seen, normally a dark, immoral place. figuratively
"The area by the canal is the underbelly of town – not something you’d see in the guidebooks."
Show 1 more definition
- 6 lower side wordnet
Example
More examples"Yanni knows the underbelly of Algiers very well."
Etymology
From under- + belly.
Related phrases
More for "underbelly"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.