<p><strong>Adjective</strong></p><ul><li>lying or situated beneath, as a substratum</li><li>fundamental</li><li>basic: the underlying cause of their discontent</li><li>implicit</li><li>discoverable only by close scrutiny or analysis: an underlying seriousness in his witticisms</li><li>(of a claim, mortgage, etc.) taking precedence; anterior; prior</li><li>Linguistics: belonging to an earlier stage in the transformational derivation of a sentence or other structure; belonging to the deep structure</li></ul>