Underway
adv, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A road, track, path, or street for going under another way or obstacle; an underpass.
"As Minneapolis grew, the city demanded that M&StL construct "underways" beneath city roadways."
- 2 An underground passage, subway, tunnel.
"There are in fact many such subterranean underways in Germany, speeding traffic beneath bergs, burgs and villages and into and around and under big city downtowns ..."
- 3 A voyage, especially underwater.
"I had been the diving officer on three previous submarines, …, and was an experienced officer of the deck with many underways and landings under my belt on all three."
- 1 currently in progress wordnet
- 1 In motion, in progress; being done or carried out; on a journey.
"The next wave, well underway, is shipping back-office business tasks overseas, ..."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"A campaign is underway throughout the company to achieve economy in the use of copying paper."
Etymology
Calque of Dutch onderweg (“underway”), equivalent to under- + way. Compare also German unterwegs.
From under + way.
More for "underway"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.