Word.ws English Dictionary

undertext

undertext noun: text situated below overlying text, such as on a palimpsest.

Noun

undertext (plural undertexts)

  1. Text situated below overlying text, such as on a palimpsest.
    • The problem is that many of the letters in the undertext of the Palimpsest cannot be read, […]2007, Reviel Netz & William Noel, The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist, Da Capo Press (2007), unnamed page
    • […] Agnes reckoned that for the vellum to have been reused in this fashion, the undertext must date to at least 200 years before the overwriting.2009, Janet Soskice, The Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels, Knopf, →ISBN, page 125

Forms of undertext

pluralundertexts

Origin of undertext

From under + text.

Questions about undertext

What does undertext mean?
Undertext means text situated below overlying text, such as on a palimpsest.
What part of speech is undertext?
Undertext is a noun.
What is the plural of undertext?
The plural of undertext is undertexts.

Words near undertext in the dictionary

  1. undertenants
  2. undertest
  3. undertested
  4. undertesting
  5. undertests
  6. undertext
  7. undertexts
  8. undertheorised
  9. undertheorize
  10. undertheorized
  11. undertheorizes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: undertext (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.

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