undersong

From under- +‎ song.

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undersong (plural undersongs)

1. An accompanying sound or strain; an accompaniment.
   • 1702, Sam Woodford, “In Sacred Memory of the Very Reverend Author of the Following Work, Joseph Beaumont, S.T.P. &c. To Psyche.”, in Joseph Beaumont, edited by Charles Beaumont, Psyche, or Love’s Mystery, , 2nd edition, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University-Press, for Tho Bennet, , →OCLC:

     Accept the Off'ring I at diſtance bring, / With Harp ill-tun'd, and long thro' Age unſtrung, / Fit only to fill up ſome Under-ſong!

   • 1795, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Epistle IV: To the Author of Poems”, in Poems on Various Subjects‎, London: G.G. and J. Robinsons, published 1796, page 127:

     But th’ unceasing rill
     To the soft Wren or Lark’s descending trill
     Murmurs sweet undersong mid jasmin bowers.

   • 1807, William Wordsworth, “”, in Poems, in Two Volumes, volume II, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, , →OCLC, page 119:

     To sit without emotion, hope, or aim, / By my half-kitchen my half-parlour fire, / And listen to the flapping of the flame, / Or kettle, whispering it's faint undersong.

   • 1926, C. S. Lewis (as Clive Hamilton), Dymer, Canto 4, stanza 1,in Walter Hooper (ed.) Narrative Poems, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979, p. 36,

     Then the rain;

     Twelve miles of downward water like one dart,

     And in one leap were launched along the plain,

     To break the budding flower and flood the grain,

     And keep with dripping sound an undersong

     Amid the wheeling thunder all night long.

2. (figuratively) Subordinate and underlying idea, meaning or atmosphere; undertone.
   • 1824, Walter Savage Landor, “Conversation VI. Æschines and Phocion.”, in Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, volume I, London: Taylor and Hessey, , →OCLC, page 77:

     Defective however and faulty must be the composition in prose, which you and I with all our study and attention cannot understand. In poetry it is not exactly so: the greater part of it must be intelligible to all: but in the very best there is often an undersong of sense, which none beside the poetical mind, or one deeply versed in its mysteries, can comprehend.

   • 1916, John Cowper Powys, “Oscar Wilde” in Suspended Judgments, New York: G. Arnold Shaw, p. 410,

     The mad smouldering lust which gives a sort of under-song of surging passion to the sophisticated sensuality of “Salome”

   • 1986, Seamus Heaney, “The Government of the Tongue”, in The Government of the Tongue‎, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, published 1989, page 101:

     Here we see this most reticent and mannerly of poets [i.e. Elizabeth Bishop] being compelled by the undeniable impetus of her art to break with her usual inclination to conciliate the social audience. [...] she usually limited herself to a note that would not have disturbed the discreet undersong of conversation between strangers breakfasting at a seaside hotel.

   • 1994, Harold Bloom, chapter 8, in The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages‎, New York: Harcourt Brace, page 191:

     Even if Boswell had never written the Life, we would remember Johnson’s personality, which is the undersong of everything he wrote and said.

3. (obsolete) The burden of a song; the chorus; the refrain.
   • 1625, Joseph Hall, “A Sermon of Publick Thanksgiving”, in The Contemplations upon the History of the New Testament‎, volume 2, London, page 252:

     It is not hard to observe that David’s Allelujahs are more then his Hosannas; his thanks more then his suits. Oft-times doth he praise God when be begs nothing: seldome ever doth he beg that favour for which he doth not raise up his Soul to an anticipation of Thanks: neither is this any other then the universal under-song of all his Heavenly Ditties [...]

   • 1697, Virgil, “The Third Pastoral. Or, Palæmon, Menalclas, Damætas, Palæmon.”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. , London: Jacob Tonson, , →OCLC, page 13, lines 85–88:

     The Challenge to Damætas ſhall belong / Menalcas ſhall ſuſtain his under Song: / Each in his turn your tuneful numbers bring; / In turns the tuneful Muſes love to ſing.

• Gunderson