- 1暗中破壞、逐漸削弱（如：削弱信心、動搖權威、掏空根基）
To something slowly, from underneath, so that it finally cannot stand. The picture inside the word is literal: in old warfare, attackers dug a tunnel — a mine — under a castle wall, and when they burned the props holding the tunnel up, the wall fell down by itself. Nobody hit the wall. That is exactly how the word feels today. You undermine someone's confidence, their authority, their position, an argument, a peace deal, a country's economy. The damage is gradual, often hidden, and often done by someone who looks friendly on the surface — a colleague who keeps 'just checking' your work in front of the boss is undermining you, even though every single thing they say sounds helpful. That quiet, indirect quality is the heart of the word: one loud insult is not undermining; a hundred small doubts are. It also keeps its physical use — a river can undermine a bridge, can undermine a cliff — and there the meaning is plain: it eats away the ground underneath. Watch the grammar: it takes a direct object (undermine ME, undermine the plan), and the thing undermined is usually something abstract that stands up because people believe in it — trust, confidence, authority, credibility. Facts can also undermine a claim, which is a slightly cooler, academic use: the new evidence undermines his theory. Past tense: undermined.
組成under- (underneath) + mine (to dig a tunnel under something). From the old siege tactic of digging under a wall to bring it down without attacking it directly.
同家族的字
- minethe same 'mine' — a dug tunnel; also why a buried bomb is called a mine
- undergroundsame under- meaning physically beneath
- undergosame under-, though there it has drifted to mean 'go through, submit to'
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
undermineverb/ˌʌn.dəˈmaɪn/
- 1
To dig underneath (something), to make a passage for destructive or military purposes; to sap.
- Martin, for instance, had on one occasion undermined a tree sacred to old gods, then stood in the path of its fall, but forced it to fall elsewhere by making the sign of the Cross.
- 2
To weaken or work against; to hinder, sabotage.
- The war efforts were undermined by the constant bickering between the allies.
- The penile mishaps (one involving a bristled toothbrush), severings (one involves hungry ducks) and surgeries cited by Ms. Roach are nothing if not memorable, but her book consistently undermines its own discoveries.
- 3
To erode the base or foundation of something, e.g. by the action of water.
- Services between Glasgow Queen Street and Edinburgh Waverley via Falkirk High are currently suspended, following a 30-metre breach of the Union Canal that occurred on August 12 after torrential rain and thunderstorms. The thousands of gallons of water that cascaded onto the railway line below washed away track, ballast and overhead line equipment, and undermined embankments along a 300-metre section of Scotland's busiest rail link.
- Dungeness: The branch to the nuclear power station at Dungeness has been temporarily out of use because badgers have undermined the trackbed.
- 4
human-sciencesphilosophysciencesTo regard an object as the sum of the parts that compose it, in object-oriented ontology.
- We can even go further: when we consider an object in everyday life we do not usually just undermine or overmine it as if it demanded an either/or approach, but rather we run the two processes in tandem: duomining, as Harman labels it.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。