underframework

alternative under-framework

1. figurativelyno pluralliteralAn underlying or supportive framework or similar structure.

   The use of an underframework, so to speak, of parallel or crosshatched lines is the best earmark of this ware.

   2000, Alfred Vincent Kidder, An Introduction to the Study of Southwestern Archaeology, page 224

   5 more examples

   No. 2 shows the cop of weft in its case in position for working, where it is retained by two smooth bowls of bosses fixed in their places on the stand or underframework of the loom.

   1915, Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, page 677

   And a dangerous extracurricular activity had helped turn his muscles to iron: he “rode the rods” with other boys, clinging to the underframework of Union Pacific freight cars rumbling through Abilene.

   1970, published 2008, Colonel Red Reeder, Dinosaurs A to Z

   He said at that time: I feel the deepest conviction that no sanitary system can be adequate to the requirements of the time or can cure those radical evils which infest the underframework of society unless the importance be distinctly recognized, and the duly manfully undertaking, of improving the social condition of the poor.

   1970, Hearings, Reports and Prints of the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, page 907

   As for the dedicated non-experts, they were moving again from urban detail to more general schemes of social regeneration, to the nature of what Sir John Simon had called earlier in the century the 'underframework of society', from issues related to municipal action within the particular city to national welfare policy which would iron out some of the differences between cities.

   1999, Harold James Dyos, Michael Wolff, The Victorian City: Images and Realities, volume 1, page 94

   We hold onto the underframework of the carriage, barely breathing, expecting a call to be raised that someone has seen us.

   2018, Kim Foster, Game of Secrets

   Synonyms: foundation