undermine

Verb

undermine (third-person singular simple present undermines, present participle undermining, simple past and past participle undermined)

1. To dig underneath (something), to make a passage for destructive or military purposes; to sap.
   • Martin, for instance, had on one occasion undermined a tree sacred to old gods, then stood in the path of its fall, but forced it to fall elsewhere by making the sign of the Cross.2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 312
2. (figuratively) To weaken or work against; to hinder, sabotage.
   • The war efforts were undermined by the constant bickering between the allies.
   • The penile mishaps (one involving a bristled toothbrush), severings (one involves hungry ducks) and surgeries cited by Ms. Roach are nothing if not memorable, but her book consistently undermines its own discoveries.2008 April 7, Janet Maslin, “A Sex Researcher Walks Into a Lab, and Then Things Start to Get Comical”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 26 Nov 2022

   Synonyms:

   corrode, undercut

3. To erode the base or foundation of something, e.g. by the action of water.
   • Services between Glasgow Queen Street and Edinburgh Waverley via Falkirk High are currently suspended, following a 30-metre breach of the Union Canal that occurred on August 12 after torrential rain and thunderstorms. The thousands of gallons of water that cascaded onto the railway line below...2020 August 26, “Network News: Major flood damage severs key Edinburgh-Glasgow rail artery”, in Rail, page 21
   • Dungeness: The branch to the nuclear power station at Dungeness has been temporarily out of use because badgers have undermined the trackbed.2026 July 22, Howard Johnston, “Regional News: Southern”, in RAIL, number 1066, page 21
4. To regard an object as the sum of the parts that compose it, in object-oriented ontology.
   • We can even go further: when we consider an object in everyday life we do not usually just undermine or overmine it as if it demanded an either/or approach, but rather we run the two processes in tandem: duomining, as Harman labels it.2022, Nicholas Gayle, Conrad and the Being of the World, page 25