Literary notes about underpin (AI summary)
In literature, “underpin” is often used to convey the act of providing support or reinforcement, whether to physical structures or abstract concepts. In discussions of construction, it can describe the arduous process of stabilizing foundations, walls, and other critical parts of a building, as in the working of a cathedral’s west end or the reinforcements of elevated railway columns [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. The term also appears in settings where it metaphorically supports ideas or policies, such as efforts to bolster macroeconomic stabilization or ensure that observations are well grounded [9, 10]. Even in more imaginative or technical portrayals, underpinning spans both the literal act of shoring up structures and the figurative process of establishing a foundation for further development—for instance, in advancing earthwork techniques or capturing the gradual natural processes beneath tidal streams [11, 12, 13].
- The difficulty of the work is realized when we consider that it takes a whole month to underpin 4 feet of foundation.
— from Winchester by Sidney Heath - There was a matter of underpinning for a start, but it costs money to underpin the west end of a cathedral.
— from The Burglars' Club: A Romance in Twelve Chronicles by Henry Augustus Hering - Serious settlements had taken place, and rendered it necessary to underpin the walls.
— from Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles by Daniel Hack Tuke - In a number of places it was necessary to underpin the columns of the elevated railways, and a variety of methods were adopted for the work.
— from The New York Subway, Its Construction and Equipment by Interborough Rapid Transit Company - It was found necessary, a few years since, to underpin three of the large houses in Grosvenor Place, London, at an immense expense.
— from A Treatise on the Origin, Progress, Prevention, and Cure of Dry Rot in Timber With remarks on the means of preserving wood from destruction by sea worms, beetles, ants, etc. by Thomas Allen Britton - It was planned to underpin the walls, where erosion at the ground level had weakened them, with hard-burned brick laid in cement mortar.
— from The Repair Of Casa Grande Ruin, Arizona, in 1891 Fifteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1893-94, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1897, pages 315-348 by Cosmos Mindeleff - They found the hole in which Mrs. Higgs had stepped, and the pole which had been used to underpin the middle boards.
— from The Wharf by the Docks: A Novel by Florence Warden - above the ground level in rubble-work, flint, or brick, being known as the “Underpin Course.”
— from Cottage Building in Cob, Pisé, Chalk and Clay: A Renaissance (2nd edition) by Clough Williams-Ellis - Despite this progress, structural reforms necessary to underpin macroeconomic stabilization were not pursued vigorously.
— from The 1996 CIA World Factbook by United States. Central Intelligence Agency - They must serve to underpin your observations.
— from Opuscula: Essays chiefly Philological and Ethnographical by R. G. (Robert Gordon) Latham - Tidal streams [ Pg 116] form through the sand banks, and gradually underpin the sand, which falls into these streams and is carried out to sea.
— from Reminiscences of a Liverpool Shipowner, 1850-1920 by Forwood, William Bower, Sir - “I resumed: ‘Further we must underpin the runners and work up the earth herring-wise.
— from The Mercy of Allah by Hilaire Belloc - "If we have to build up and underpin the line, it will certainly cost us something," he said.
— from Partners of the Out-Trail by Harold Bindloss
