a. and adv. [UNDER adv. + -MOST.]
1. adj. Holding the lowest place or position.
1555. Eden, Decades W. India, Contents (Arb.), 45. The Antipodes whiche inhabite the vndermost halfe of the baule of the earth.
a. 1586. Sidney, Arcadia, III. ii. The fall is greater from the first to the second, then from the second to ibe vndermost.
1665. Bunyan, Holy Citie, 171. This Jasper is said to be one of the Foundations, and that too the first and undermost.
1771. Encycl. Brit., III. 46. The advantage gained will be always equal to twice the number of pulleys in the moveable or undermost block.
1797. Holcroft, trans. Stolberg’s Trav., II. xlvii. The scenes were of three partitions: the undermost of marble,… and the upper of … wood.
1838. T. Thomson, Chem. Org. Bodies, 986. A force sufficient to counterbalance this attraction of the undermost film.
b. absol. The bottom.
1876. Mrs. Whitney, Sights & Ins., II. xiii. 429. Living … with keen, conscious pain at the undermost of everything.
2. Predicative, or as adv. In the lowest or lower place or position.
1617. J. Taylor (Water P.), Obs. & Trav. fr. Lond. to Hamburgh, Wks. (1630), 85/2. A good featherbed vndermost, with cleane sheets … another featherbed vppermost.
1665. Phil. Trans., I. 45. These Crucibles are laid sloaping, eight undermost, and seven above them.
1709. Berkeley, Th. Vision, § 115. It is inverted, because the heels are uppermost and the head undermost.
1781. Phil. Trans., LXXI. 391. Upon … holding it with the snow undermost, the whole of it adhered.
1825. Scott, Talism., iii. The assailant … flung himself above the struggling Saracen, and … kept him undernost.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., xiv. III. 396. The party indeed which had then been undermost was now uppermost.
