Beneath

How to spell beneath

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce beneath

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does beneath mean?

1. prepositionIn or to a lower position than something; directly under.
2. prepositionLower than someone in dignity or worth; not good enough to deserve their attention.

Beneath in a sentence

• The cat was sleeping beneath the kitchen table.

• She considered the petty gossip beneath her notice.

• Workers found old coins buried beneath the floorboards.

• Such dishonest tactics were beneath a professional of his standing.

Where does beneath come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word, descending directly from the Old English beneothan, a compound formed from the prefix be-, meaning 'by' or 'at', and neothan, meaning 'below' or 'down under'. The element neothan shares its Germanic ancestry with words like 'nether' (as in the Netherlands, the 'low lands') and the modern 'beneath' simply preserves the old sense of being positioned lower than something else. Over the centuries the two parts fused into a single word, and the spelling settled with the 'ea' digraph representing the long 'ee' sound, much as in 'breath' and 'heath'. Because the word is so old and homely, its meaning has stayed remarkably stable, shifting only slightly to take on the figurative sense of something being too lowly to deserve attention. The main spelling trap is purely the vowel: the sound is 'eeth', yet it is written 'eath', so writers must resist spelling it 'beneeth'.

How the word is built

• be- (by, at)
• -neath (from Old English neothan: below, under)