Undersee

verb

verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To see or look under or below; see below the surface of. transitive

    "Newfoundland guides, trying to point out to a fisherman a salmon in the water, may say: "You have to undersee the shine." Ken has a remarkable ability to "undersee the shine." He is not deceived by surfaces."

  2. 2
    To look intently into; examine; inspect. transitive

    "At these less visible but still crucial levels, a substantial military presence would appear to have strengthened the capacity of the government to implement policy, by toughening the chain of command and by enabling officers to play watchdog roles "underseeing" civilian ministers."

  3. 3
    To neglect; fail to see properly or adequately; turn a blind eye to; ignore. transitive

    "But he didn't read books; he only oversaw, or undersaw, the niggling details of their mass production."

Synonyms

All synonyms
examine

Example

More examples

"Newfoundland guides, trying to point out to a fisherman a salmon in the water, may say: "You have to undersee the shine." Ken has a remarkable ability to "undersee the shine." He is not deceived by surfaces."

Etymology

From under- + see. Cognate with Dutch onderzien (“to see below”), German untersehen (“to see below”).

Related phrases

turn blind eye

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.