underworld
Americannoun
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the criminal element of human society.
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the imagined abode of departed souls or spirits; Hades.
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a region below the surface, as of the earth or a body of water.
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the opposite side of the earth; the antipodes.
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Archaic. the earth.
noun
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criminals and their associates considered collectively
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( as modifier )
underworld connections
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the regions below the earth's surface regarded as the abode of the dead; Hades
Etymology
Origin of underworld
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Yet before she can truly represent both the queen of the underworld and goddess of spring, Moreno must first survive the gauntlet that is the New York winter.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 27, 2026
He drank tall glasses of orange juice in seedy dives as he infiltrated an underworld of bank-robbing clowns and bird-obsessed mobsters.
From Salon • Jan. 23, 2026
Time France's debut edition also includes an interview with US ambassador to France Charles Kushner, a report from Ukraine's Donbas region and an investigation into the art trafficking underworld, according to its table of contents.
From Barron's • Dec. 15, 2025
The ice is still hot, as they might say in the Parisian underworld.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 25, 2025
Once you’ve visited the underworld, you never forget the way back.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
