Etymology

under

un·der
U1N1D2E1R1

Today it means: Beneath; below; at or to the bottom of, or the area covered or surmounted by. Full definition →

Middle English under ← Old English under ← Proto-West Germanic *undar
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The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European · inherited from*(H)n̥dʰér“under”
  2. Proto-Germanic · inherited from*under
  3. Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*undar
  4. Old English · inherited fromunder
  5. Middle English · inherited fromunder
  6. English todayunder

From Middle English under, from Old English under, from Proto-West Germanic *undar, from Proto-Germanic *under, from a merger of Proto-Indo-European *(H)n̥dʰér (“under”) and *h₁entér (“inside”). Cognate with German unter, Dutch onder, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish under, Faroese and Icelandic undir; also Old High German untar (“under”), Sanskrit अन्तर् (antar, “within”), Latin infrā (“below, beneath”) and inter (“between, among”).

Words from the same roots

Old Englishunder all →

Underhay

Proto-West Germanic*undar all →

under-

Proto-Germanic*under all →

under-undercomeunderdo

Proto-Indo-European*(H)n̥dʰér all →

under-

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.