understage
English edit
Etymology edit
Adjective edit
understage (not comparable)
- (of machinery etc) underneath the stage
Noun edit
understage (plural understages)
- (theater) The area beneath a stage.
- 1900, William Paul Gerhard, Theatres: Their Safety from Fire and Panic, Their Comfort and Healthfulness, page 97:
- When deep pits, required in the understage for the machinery and traps, cannot be drained on account of insufficient depth of the street sewer
- 1996, James M. Saslow, The Medici wedding of 1589: Florentine festival as Theatrum Mundi, page 86:
- The understage being only 9 feet (5 braccia) high, the mountain had to rise in telescoping stages
- 2001, Augusto Boal with Adrian Jackson and Candida Blaker, Hamlet and the baker's son: my life in theatre and politics:
- dozens of strapping stage-hands in the understage manipulating warships, cannons dispatching balls of fire, blue smoke.
Verb edit
understage (third-person singular simple present understages, present participle understaging, simple past and past participle understaged)
- (medicine) To underestimate the severity of a patient's illness