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below

prepositionadverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//bɪˈləʊ//
  • United States//bɪˈloʊ//
  • India//bɪˈloː(w)//
  • //bɪˈlaː//

Lower in spatial position than.

preposition

  1. 1

    Lower in spatial position than.

    One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the steps of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from interruption, for he was seated on a horse-block below me, playing with a fox terrier.

    The treasure is buried two meters below the surface.

    The marmalade is on the shelf below the bread.

  2. 2

    Lower than in value, price, rank, concentration, etc.

    one degree below kings

    The temperature is below zero.

    Liverpool are below Manchester City in the Premier League.

  3. 3

    Downstream of.

    The River Thames is tidal below Teddington Lock.

  4. 4

    South of.

    Sudan is below Egypt.

  5. 5

    Unsuitable to the rank or dignity of; beneath.

    They beheld, with a just loathing and disdain, […] how below all history the persons and their actions were.

    who thinks no fact below his regard

    Such petty behavior is below me.

  6. 6

    Downstage of.

    Below the sofa is a low, round coffee table.

Etymology

From Middle English bilooghe, equivalent to be- + low. Compare also earlier Middle English alogh, alow, aloȝ, alowe (“below”), benethen (“beneath”), Dutch omlaag (“downwards”).

adverb

  1. 1

    In or to a lower place.

    The town is situated on a hillside, with a river running below.

    He was pulled below by a sea monster.

    But then I had the [massive] flintlock by me for protection. […]The linen-press and a chest on the top of it formed, however, a very good gun-carriage; and, thus mounted, aim could be taken out of the window at the old mare feeding in the meadow below by the brook, and a 'bead' could be drawn upon Molly, the dairymaid, kissing the fogger behind the hedge,[…].

  2. 2

    In or to a lower place. On or to a lower storey.

    She lives below, on the ground floor.

  3. 3

    In or to a lower place. On or to a lower deck, especially as relative to the main deck.

    The captain went below to inspect the engine.

    the landlubbers lying down below

  4. 4

    Later in the same text.

    This point is explained below.

    By their execution hereof, the Parties incur a legal obligation to pass consideration under this Loan Contract as is set forth below.

  5. 5

    Below zero.

    It was forty degrees below.

The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).