The underpinning is the foundation of a building, or a part of it.
1804. Two hundred feet of good Hammered Stone for Underpinning wanted.—Advt., Mass. Spy, May 9.
1804. You will discover a vacuum in the underpinning of the house, which is of brick.—Id., Dec. 19.
1806. A pigeon house, underpinned with brick, and one other small building blown down.—Mississippi Herald, May 20.
1823. Said building shall be underpinned with rock.—Advt. for the building of a gaol: Missouri Intelligencer, June 10.
1848. [Time] knocks out the underpinnings of proud buildings.—Dow, Jun., ‘Patent Sermons,’ i. 226.
1848. See SLAB-SIDED.
1851. The foundation walls were done, the ‘underpinning’ was ‘set,’ and they were ‘backing up’ the same with ‘mortar wall,’ preparatory to laying on the flooring timbers and starting the brick walls.—Knick. Mag., xxxvii. 130 (Feb.).
1857. I reckon I had a time of it with the old buck that made them things [scars] on my underpinin’ (sic), and on my corn-stealer, as they say out West.—S. H. Hammond, ‘Wild Northern Scenes,’ p. 167.
1858. It [the fire] soon burst out, through the underpinning, and blazed up to the height of the eaves of the jail, about twenty feet!—Knick. Mag., li. 141 (Feb.).
1860. We have knocked the underpinnings from under all Democratic parsons.—Oregon Argus, May 19.
