Underlie

What reasoning could underlie their latest decision?

Who knows what disagreements underlie this agreement?

What do you think are the problems that underlie your obsession with martyrdom?

Scientists long have understood the environmental risk factors that contribute to stroke, such as smoking and high-fat diets, but they have struggled to find the genes that underlie the heritable component of the disease — until now.

A stratum of clay underlies the surface gravel.

a doctrine underlying a theory

[…] she was carved into the bole of a red cedar tree. Sun and storm had bleached the wood, moss here and there softened the crudeness of the modelling; sincerity underlay every stroke.

Some poems, echoing the purpose of early poetic treatises on scientific principles, attempt to elucidate the mathematical concepts that underlie prime numbers. Others play with primes’ cultural associations. Still others derive their structure from mathematical patterns involving primes.

The knight of Ivanhoe […] underlies the challenge of Brian der Bois Guilbert.