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Definition 2024


aboveground

aboveground

See also: above ground and above-ground

English

Adjective

aboveground (not generally comparable, comparative more aboveground, superlative most aboveground)

  1. On or above the surface of the ground.
    • 1861, Charles Reade, The Cloister and the Hearth, ch. 60:
      "This place Rome? It is but the tomb of mighty Rome." He showed Gerard . . . the gigantic vestiges of antiquity that peeped aboveground here and there.
    • 2012 March-April, Anna Lena Phillips, “Sneaky Silk Moths”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 172:
      Last spring, the periodical cicadas emerged across eastern North America. Their vast numbers and short above-ground life spans inspired awe and irritation in humans—and made for good meals for birds and small mammals.
  2. (figuratively) Not dead and buried; alive.
    • 1992, David Webb Peoples, Unforgiven, screenplay:
      Alice: I told you, he don't have no wife, not aboveground, anyhow.
  3. (Can we verify(+) this sense?) Not of or relating to the social or political underground; in the open; existing, produced, or published by or within the establishment.
    • 2003, Henry Jenkins III, ‎Tara McPherson, ‎Jane Shattuc, Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture (page 228)
      More disturbing was that zines and underground culture didn't seem to be any sort of threat to this aboveground world.
    • 2006, Watching What You Eat (in Indianapolis Monthly, March 2006, page 82)
      And they argue that if aboveground activists continue to express public sympathy for their underground counterparts []
    • 2014, Stephen Duncombe, Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture
      But there is yet another interlocutor that precedes the underground culture of zines: the aboveground world of straight society.

Antonyms

Translations

Noun

aboveground (uncountable)

  1. The portion of society that is not underground.