undertow

present singular third person undertows · participle present undertowing · participle past undertowed · past undertowed

1. transitiveTo pull or tow under; drag beneath; pull down.

   Off in a gallop the General wheeled vanishing, And sped his steed away into the blue, When Lineoln now alone let go his speech Which had before been undertowed by force, [...]

   1914, Denton Jaques Snider, Lincoln at Richmond

2. transitiveTo pull down by, or as by, an undertow.

   A sense that the air, a sighting of muddy river, or that outcrop of rock so implacably bland in the light of midday, is undertowed by memory.

   1998, Richard Gough, David Williams, Ric Allsopp, Performance Research: On Place

   1 more example

   I sink because I cannot swim, undertowed to the Centre, abandoning all remembrance of the surface toward the cloud of unknowing, without choice I'm pulled.

   2003, Michael T. Leibig, Mike Leibig Traveling in Disguise

3. intransitiveTo flow or behave as an undertow.

   Everybody knows this and acts accordingly; but when you say it, it sounds bad and bold, and makes you uncomfortable to hear it, because the puritan blood is still undertowing in your veins.

   1917, The Unpopular review

plural undertows

1. A short-range flow of water returning seaward from the waves breaking on the shore.

   A strong undertow may sweep a returning swimmer off their feet but it does not carry them far from the shore.

2. broadlyA feeling that runs contrary to one's normal one.