underset

underset verb: to set under or beneath.

Verb

underset (third-person singular simple present undersets, present participle undersetting, simple past and past participle underset)

(transitive) To set under or beneath.
- How it was shaped up with proper foreway and under-set for dished wheels, or how iron "clouts" (with "clout-nails") were carefully fitted into it to take the wear — is all but gone from my memory, as indeed it was hardly worth storing [...]1963, George Sturt, The Wheelwright's Shop
To prop or support.
- being a company at that time , and well underset with rich men , and good order1622, Francis, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Alban [i.e. Francis Bacon], The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh, […], London: […] W[illiam] Stansby for Matthew Lownes, and William Barret...
- Unless posts are underset in very steep mines they are apt to fall out before the pressure of the roof has tightened them. Posts are sometimes too much underset, owing to their being too long.1887, Arthur Robert Sawyer, Accidents in mines in the North Staffordshire coalfield arising from falls of roof and sides

Noun

underset (plural undersets)

undercurrent (of water)

Forms of underset

Verb
third-person singular present	undersets
present participle	undersetting
past participle	underset
past	underset
alternative form	under-set
Noun
plural	undersets

Origin of underset

From Middle English undersetten, from Old English undersettan (“to put, place, or set under, put in the place of another, substitute, falsify, forge, counterfeit, place as a pledge, hypothecate, add, annex, subjoin, make subject, submit, set beneath, esteem less”), equivalent to under- + set. Cognate with Dutch ondersetten (“to put beneath”), German untersetzen (“to put beneath, pin”).

Words formed from underset

undersetter

Words that rhyme with underset

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about underset

What does underset mean?: Underset means to set under or beneath.
What part of speech is underset?: Underset can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of underset?: The past tense of underset is underset.

Words near underset in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: underset (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-underset.wav.

Cite this entry: “underset.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/underset. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.