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Underling   Listen
noun
Underling  n.  
1.
An inferior person or agent; a subordinate; a low-ranking employee.
2.
Hence, A mean, sorry fellow. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Underling" Quotes from Famous Books



... ushered into the great hall of Holloway prison. The Deputy-Governor at once accosted us, and told us to wait, standing against the wall, until he could "see about us." Forgetting the rules and regulations, we resumed our conversation, until we attracted the attention of an underling, who marched up with a lordly air and sternly ordered us to stop talking. Presently two figures leisurely descended the flight of stone steps leading to the offices and the interior of the prison. I recognised one of these as the Governor ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... or of your washy French wines for the true Hainault vintage. I would have you to understand that my friend here and I are men who meet with some consideration in the world, though we care not to speak our names to every underling. Deserve well of us, therefore, or it may ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... muttered Marto. "That manta must have been garb of some king's daughter, and no common maid. It makes her a different thing. Would you not think the padre some underling, and ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... that Mr BREAKWATER could see me now, and presently showed me into the aforesaid private room, where, behind a large table covered with wicker baskets containing dockets and memoranda, et hoc genus omne, sat the very gentleman whom I had recently taken for his own underling! ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... had to acknowledge such conviction. The prime minister held short little debates with his underlings—with dukes and marquises, with earls and viscounts; held short debates with them, but allowed to no underling—to no duke, and to no viscount—to have any longer an opinion of his own. The altar had been a false altar: it was enough for them that they were so told. With great wisdom the majority of them considered that this was enough; and so the bill for the repeal of the corn laws was brought ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... Whan he for lust his god refuseth, And tok him to the dieules craft. Lo, what profit him is belaft: That thing thurgh which he wende have stonde, Ferst him exilede out of londe Which was his oghne, and from a king Made him to ben an underling; 2350 And siththen to deceive a queene, That torneth him to mochel teene; Thurgh lust of love he gat him hate, That ende couthe he noght abate. His olde sleyhtes whiche he caste, Yonge Alisaundre ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower

... cried Mimer, "I no longer fear to meet that upstart, Amilias. If his war-coat can withstand the stroke of such a sword as Balmung, then I shall not be ashamed to be his underling. But, if this good blade is what it seems to be, it will not fail me; and I, Mimer the Old, shall still be called the wisest ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... regal best, with the kind of noblesse oblige that would bring worshipful gratitude to the heart of any underling. "Oh, just a quick run-through on whatever you think would be interesting, Mr. Midguard; I don't want to take up too much ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett

... Lancet, expecting to find it quoting his reports to the home Board of Health concerning the yellow fever germ. The consul knew that not one in fifty of his acquaintances in the States had ever heard of Coralio. He knew that two men, at any rate, would have to read his report—some underling in the State Department and a compositor in the Public Printing Office. Perhaps the typesticker would note the increase of commerce in Coralio, and speak of it, over the cheese and ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... her life with one who had been once a failure. Margaret! How wonderful she was! If Margaret said he ought to go back and be a lawyer, he would go—yes, even if he had to enter his uncle's office as an underling to do it. His soul loathed the idea, but he would do it for Margaret, if she thought it best. And so he ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... what could he ever be? What was the use of his studies in farming practise, if he was always to be an underling whose sole duty was to carry out the crude ideas of his employers? And what chance was there for a farm-hand to become a farm owner, or even a farm renter, especially if he had a mother to support out of the twenty-five or thirty dollars of his monthly ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick

... one day short of Sol, Sawtelle got Five-Jet Admiral Gordon's office on the sub-space radio. An officious underling tried to ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... The Constable and his underling were on the ground before that stubborn citadel answered the reiterated summons; but at last there came the sound of bolts withdrawn. An iron bar dropped from its socket with a clang that echoed long and loud in the empty hall, the door ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... with making them speak out of character: Or sometimes perhaps for no better reason than that a governing Player, to have the mouthing of some favourite speech himself, would snatch it from the unworthy lips of an Underling. ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... Montepulciano, now justly celebrated for its wine, he had the amusing adventure with the hostler which gave occasion for his vivid portrait of an Italian uffiziale, and also to that irresistible impulse to cane the insolent hostler, from the ill consequences of which he was only saved by the underling's precipitate flight. The night was spent at Radicofani, five and twenty miles farther on. A clever postilion diversified the route to Viterbo, another forty-three miles. The party was now within sixteen leagues, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... would have been impossible for Ryley to breathe without irritating his employer, and the fact that his plebeian cousin's son was probably the most reliable underling to be got in the Five Towns did not in the slightest degree lessen Stanway's dislike ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... underling will I be," says Kjartan, "while I can keep my feet and handle a sword; it seems to me a pitiful thing to be taken thus like a lamb out of the pen, or a fox out of the trap. I hold it a far better choice, if one must die, to do ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... Cap. he was hiding somewheres, but he would have it that he'd beat it down th' escape," said the gum-chewer, with the sombre triumph of the underling whose sound advice has been overruled by those above him. He shifted his wholesome (or, as some say, unwholesome) morsel to the other side of his mouth, and for the first time addressed Archie directly. "Ye're pinched!" ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... joined the general cry of the underling writers against Mr. Pope; and wrote many letters in the Flying Post, with an intention to reduce his reputation, with as little success as his other antagonists had done. In his prose Essay on Criticism, and in the Arts ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... which may indeed delight a fool, but rouses the indignation rather than the gratitude of a wise man. It struck him too that Cleopatra intended to make use of him, in the first place as a toy to amuse herself, and then as a useful instrument or underling, and this so gravely incensed and discomfited the serious and sensitive young man that he would willingly have quitted Memphis and Egypt at once and without any leave-taking. However, it was not quite easy for him ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... He did not like to be treated like a charwoman. As for the pension, he had never asked it, and counted it offensive to be treated as if he had shown a greed which required to be repressed. It came out, subsequently, that the letter had been written by an underling, but when Earl Russell was appealed to, he would only promise a salary when Dr. Livingstone should have settled somewhere! The whole transaction had ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... gravely. Mr. Gwynn's strength lay in bowing. He was also remarkable for the unflagging attention which he paid to whatever was said to him. On such occasions his unblinking stare, wholly receptive like an underling taking orders, and never a glimmer of either contradiction or agreement or even intelligence to show therein, was almost disconcerting. Mrs. Hanway-Harley, however, declared that this receptive, inane stare was ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... gods, a half-god, but is regarded coldly by his kin. Wotan is his single friend in the family, and with Wotan he preserves the attitude of a self-acknowledged underling. He stands in fear of his immediate strength, while nourishing a hardly disguised contempt for his wit, as well as that of his cousins collectively. A secret hater of them all, and clear-minded in estimating them. ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... and chewed it so that it caused a large lump in his right cheek). "Come, if I had had masters like you have to bruise my skin with blows, I should not be an ass now; they would not call me Manin, but Don Manuel, and instead of being a miserable underling I should be going about giving myself airs, walking down Altavilla with my hands behind me like the senores, and reading the papers in the casinos." (Another pause, and another cutting of a hunch of bread). "It is nothing but just, if you will see it so. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... after some underling of the theatre found us out and brought us, "by Mrs. Siddons' desire," to the best places the ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... because it came home to him with stunning force that, if the money was not recovered, Jean Jacques would be a beggar. It was better to jail the father-in-law, than for the little money-master to take to the road a pauper, or stay on at St. Saviour's as an underling ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... long and dark Prospective Glass Fore-saw what future dayes should bring to pass, Your Son, said she, (nor can you it prevent) Shall subject be to many an Accident. O're all his Brethren he shall Reign as King, Yet every one shall make him underling, And those that cannot live from him asunder Ungratefully shall strive to keep him under, In worth and excellence he shall out-go them, Yet being above them, he shall be below them; 80 From others he shall ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... villainous an offence, that I must at present decline to entertain the responsibility of the very distinguished and Royal Society of British Artists, for what must be due to the rash, and ill-considered, zeal of some enthusiastic and untutored underling. ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... another facetiously, "an apprentice no longer, to be knocked about and treated as an underling. At the top, with the laurels of manhood on the brow ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... camp? When he had first talked of that raid, his promised loot had been supplies to fill their daily needs; there had been no mention of maps. By all signs Thorvald was engaged on some mission. And what would happen if he, Shann, suddenly stopped being the other's obedient underling and demanded a few explanations here ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... cruel and ruthless hands. On every side loomed the evidence of their danger. The villainous stares of foreign interlopers, the ribald jests of guards, the furtive glances of the envious, the scowls of the emancipated underling, the profanity of the domineering agitator who denounced respectability and clamored for possession of the girls,—no moment of their lives was free from ugly threats; no retreat, save the wild jungle or the mountains, offered any liberation ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... boots, boy, counterjumper[obs3]; khansamah[obs3], khansaman[obs3]; khitmutgar[obs3]; yardman. bailiff, castellan[obs3], seneschal, chamberlain, major-domo[obs3], groom of the chambers. secretary; under secretary, assistant secretary; clerk; subsidiary; agent &c. 758; subaltern; underling, understrapper; man. maid, maidservant; handmaid; confidente[Fr], lady's maid, abigail, soubrette; amah[obs3], biddy, nurse, bonne[Fr], ayah[obs3]; nursemaid, nursery maid, house maid, parlor maid, waiting ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... already done justice on this absurd candidacy, we shall ourselves prove to the pretender that to aspire to the distinguished honor of representing the nation something more is required than the money to buy a paper and pay an underling to put into good French the horrible diction of his articles and pamphlets. We confine ourselves to-day to this limited notice, but our readers may be sure that we shall keep them informed about this electoral comedy, if indeed ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... harassed by an officious person called the R.T.O. who inspected your papers and then scrutinised your person in order to satisfy himself that you were not a criminal escaping from justice. Then you were handed over to an underling who led you to a glorified cattle-truck, whose interior was an amazing jumble of boots, bare knees, helmets, rifles, packs, faces, and drill clothing, and courteously invited you ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... showing temper from time to time. Everybody else may be demobilised; I remain a soldier, and as such I have my special bank. Ah, me! the battles in Charing Cross are not the easy things they used to be. No longer, as of old, I come fresh to the attack against a mere underling, worn down by the assaults of wave after wave of brother-officers attacking, before me. I enter the Territorial Department alone and am taken on by a master-hand, supported and flanked by a number of unoccupied subordinates. About the Spring of 1925, when I expect to be the only "T" left, I anticipate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various

... Kovroff were too cautious to take an immediate, personal part in the gold-dust sale. There was a certain underling, Mr. Escrocevitch by name, at Sergei Kovroff's beck and call—a shady person, rather dirty in aspect, and who was, therefore, only admitted to Sergei's presence by the back door and through the kitchen, and even then only at times when there were ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... sense enough to remember that a sacked city of amnesty would be the poorest tribute to their own sagacity. At least London did not flog them. Their wives and sisters were not here dragged to the police stations to be brutally lashed at the command of any underling they had offended. Applause for Boriskoff and his sound and fury might be interpreted as a concession to their vanity. "We could do all this," they seemed to say; "if we forbear, let London be grateful." As for ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... recover the stolen monies adding, "And they shall be restored to thee." Then he went away, whilst I mounted without stay or delay and began to-ing and fro-ing about the world without purpose, and indeed I was become the underling of a woman without honesty or honour; and I went my rounds in this way all that my day and that my night, but happened not upon tidings of her; and thus I did on the morrow. On the third day I said to myself, "Thou art mad or silly;" for I was wandering in quest ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... faces always pleasant to see. Some of them had lived with her grandfather; most of them had served her father from the time he had inherited his estate. The Squire had been the most conservative and indulgent of masters; always liking to see the old faces. The butler was old, and even on his underling's bullet-head the gray hairs were beginning to show. Mrs. Trimmer was at least sixty, and had been getting annually bulkier for the last twenty years. The kitchen-maid was a comfortable-looking person of forty. There was an atmosphere of domestic peace in the offices of ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon

... of gardeners, arranging banks of magnificent flowers in the hall and drawing-rooms, and superintended by the head gardener, a person of much greater dignity than Ashe himself, who swore at any underling making a noise, as though the slumbers of the "quality" in the big house overhead and the danger of disturbing them were the dearest ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of dishonorable means for success, but solely to live and to die for honor, was formed; an innovation which, although merely military in its origin, speedily became of political importance, for, by means of this knightly honor, the little vassal of a minor lord was no longer viewed as a mere underling, but as a confederate in the great universal chivalric fraternity. There were also many freemen who sometimes gained their livelihood by offering their services to different courts, or by robbing on the highways, and who were too proud to serve on ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... defend poesy with the help of his underling historiographer. Let it suffice to have showed it is a fit soil for praise to dwell upon; and what dispraise may be set upon it is either easily overcome, or transformed into just commendation. So that since the ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney

... and a man is appointed to rake and scrape all he can agin him, and they listen very patiently to all he has to say, so as not to do things in a hurry. He is called "the devil's advocate," but he never gained a cause yet. The same form used to be gone through at Downing Street, by an underling, but he always gained his point. The nickname of the "devil's advocate" that I gave him did his business for him, he is no longer ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... exercised charity enough. At bottom it was Don Benito's reserve which displeased him; but the same reserve was shown towards all but his faithful personal attendant. Even the formal reports which, according to sea-usage, were, at stated times, made to him by some petty underling, either a white, mulatto or black, he hardly had patience enough to listen to, without betraying contemptuous aversion. His manner upon such occasions was, in its degree, not unlike that which might be supposed to have been ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... pinch, I should say it was more like life to work yourself up as a City man,' said Annaple. 'If you were the Squire, with all his opportunities, it would be a different thing, but there's no outlet there, and I have often admired the wisdom of the Apocryphal saying, "Make not thyself an underling ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and no attempt at it on the part of Donkin, the cantankerous cashier. He seldom addressed a word to Carrick, never a civil word, but more than once he treated his chief to a sarcastic remonstrance on his degrading familiarity with an underling. In such encounters the imperturbable graybeard was well able to take care of himself, albeit he expressed to Fergus a regret that he had not exercised a little more ingenuity in ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... primal Being, there exists another who enters into much closer relations with mankind. He is often concerned with healing and with prophecy, or with the inspiration of conjurers or shamans. Sometimes he is merely an underling, as in the case of the Massachusetts Kiehtan, and his more familiar subordinate, Hobamoc. {30} But frequently this go-between of God and Man is (like Apollo) the Son of the primal Being (often an unbegotten Son) or his ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... Hassan in cold contempt. "Let them follow if they will, and I for one shall rejoice to meet foes so brave in open battle, and there give them their revenge. Ali," he added, addressing the man who had been disguised as a merchant's underling, and who had drugged the men in the barn as his master had drugged those in the hall, and opened the moat gate to the band, "Ali, stamp upon the torch and guard that Frank till we reach the boat lest the fool should raise the country on us with his fires. Now, Princess, ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... leprosy may be cured, but the enmity of an official underling can never be dispelled,' and the malice of the persistent Ming-shu certainly points to the wisdom of the verse. Is the person of Kai-moo known to you, and where is the prison-house you ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... look on while religion perished, and as an Englishman he would not stand aloof while his fatherland was being ruined.[288] He had never wished to be anything else than a subject—but 'only of his Queen, not the underling of an unworthy and low vassal.' So far as men saw, he stood in connexion with both the parties opposed to the prevailing system. He was prayed for in the churches of the Puritans: Cartwright was one of his friends; the Scotch doctrine, that the Supreme Power, if it showed ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... wrathful, disdainful words for her presumption. For what else could she hope from this splendid creature, who, while of her own flesh and blood, had never seemed to regard her as being more than a poor superfluous underling? But strangely enough, there was no anger in Clorinda's eyes; she but laughed, as though what she had seen had made ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Prophet hastily assisted the victim of prolonged travel to some buttered toast. Having also attended to the wants of her precipitate underling, he thought it a good opportunity to proceed to a full explanation with the august couple, and he therefore remarked, with an ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... his eyes fixed upon Wingate's face. He, too, was an underling of Grant's,—a keen, intelligent-looking man, with broad shoulders and a powerful face. ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... will go on almost of its own accord, so long as foreign affairs are quiet and unbroken," wrote Mirabeau after Frederick's death. "But at the first gunshot or at the first stormy situation the whole of this little scaffolding of mediocrity will topple to the ground. How all these underling Ministers would crumple up! How everyone, from the distracted chief to the convict-gang, would shout for a pilot! Who would ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... least, Rodaine must believe that Harry had escaped unaided. There were too many other things in which Robert felt sure Rodaine had played a part, too many other mysterious happenings which must be met and coped with, before the man of the blue-white scar could know that finally the underling was beginning to show fight, that at last the crushed had begun to rise. Fairchild bent and unlaced his shoes, taking off also the heavy woolen socks which protected his feet from the biting cold. Steeling himself to the ordeal which he must undergo, he tied the laces together and ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... The Landhofmeisterin's fears had grown dim, habit had resumed sway. She worked at the affairs of State each morning, and save that the business was transacted at La Favorite instead of at the palace, and that Baron Schuetz was replaced by an underling clerk, everything seemed to have lost that touch of the unusual which is part of the menace of coming disaster. True, the courtiers were scarcely assiduous in the visiting of the Landhofmeisterin, but they dared not absent themselves entirely, for they were uncertain ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... prevent the possibility of error on the part of the Judges, who, otherwise, would never know whether a horse belonged to a General or a Subaltern, to a Member of Council or an Assistant Collector, to a Head of a Department or a wretched underling—in short to a ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... would know that a schoolboy can be at once the plague and the pride of the school. Under these circumstances small and varying penalties are obviously the most convenient things for the person keeping order; an underling can be punished for coming late, and yet do useful work when he comes. It will be possible to give a rap over the knuckles without wholly cutting off the right hand that has offended. Under these circumstances the employers have naturally resorted to fines. But there is a further ground for believing ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton

... which, his words always seemed to come from a throat much too big for them. He had greatly the look of a hen, proud of her maternal experiences, and silent from conceit of what she could say if she would. So much better would he have done as an underling than as a ruler—as a journeyman even, than a master, that to know him was almost to disbelieve in the good of what is generally called education. His learning seemed to have taken the wrong fermentation, and turned to folly instead of wisdom. But he did not do much harm, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... or the United States should have their chance. He tried the United States and was received with open arms and open minds. So he resolved to stay there, for a few years at any rate, and managed to secure a position with the tireless magician Edison, in whose workshops he toiled patiently as an underling, obtaining deeper grasp of his own instinctive knowledge, and further insight into an immense nature secret which he had determined to master alone. He had not mastered it yet—but felt fairly confident that he was near the goal. As he slept peacefully, ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... paper, the receipt for the deposit, once delivered to the Viceroy of India—and the Baronetcy which is to be your life crown is lost for ever." The old man's hands knotted themselves in anger. "The lying story that the deposit was stolen by an underling will bring you, Hugh Johnstone, to the felon's cell! You shall live to wear the convict's chain! The Government is partly aware of the facts. It rests for me to give the Viceroy the receipt for your private deposit. The private bank vault in Calcutta has hidden ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... to congratulate the despised underling with pompous insincerity, whereat Louis admonished him scowlingly to beat it back to his trial balance or he'd bounce a ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... and after a long-distance colloquy there appeared a figure crowned by the tall kola of the Brazilian's boatmen, who drove the dogs away. The dialect in which he spoke proved incomprehensible to Matthews. Luckily it was not altogether so to Abbas, that underling long resigned to the eccentricities of the Firengi, whose accomplishments included even a sketchy knowledge of his master's tongue. It appeared that the law of Bala Bala forbade the door of the Father of Swords to open before sunrise. But the tall-hatted one ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... trade of Portugal, and discourage that of France. The Portuguese, it is said, indeed, are better customers for our manufactures than the French, and should therefore be encouraged in preference to them. As they give us their custom, it is pretended we should give them ours. The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire; for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader purchases his goods always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... Brown called an underling from an adjoining room, and, committing his customer to his care, took his way up-town, in a serene frame of mind, like a man who comes from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... cast at his underling, though it was not unmingled with suspicion, was one of princely and savage scorn. Their white auditor had not been able to understand the discourse, but the dissatisfaction and uneasiness of the eyes of both were too obvious not to show that the conference ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... subaltern, subordinate, helper, servitor, attendant, retainer; domestic, maid, menial, drudge, valet, flunky, groom, coistril, lackey, underling, fag, coolie, butler, factotum, orderly, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... we excuse in a man many sins if he will show us a complete satisfaction in his position, which asks no leave to be, of mine, or any man's good opinion. But any deference to some eminent man or woman of the world, forfeits all privilege of nobility. He is an underling: I have nothing to do with him; I will speak with his master. A man should not go where he cannot carry his whole sphere or society with him,—not bodily, the whole circle of his friends, but atmospherically. He should preserve ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... assignments. And slowly he began to edge along the wall toward the other doorway. Once he froze as the officer strode by, Lablet in attendance. But what the painted warrior was looking for was a crystal box on a shelf to Raf's left. When he had pointed that out to an underling he was off again, and Raf was free to continue ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... council board, he never held quite the highest rank in any naval expedition, he never ruled with only the Queen above him even in Ireland. He who of all men hated most and deserved least to be an underling, was forced to play the subordinate all through the most brilliant part of his variegated life of adventure. It was only for a moment, at Cadiz or Fayal, that by a doubtful breach of prerogative he struggled to the surface, to sink again directly the achievement was accomplished. This soured and ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... us, we must keep moving, or zoology would soon revert to the crude guesses and mistaken theories of the azoic period. And yet," continued the beast, after the keeper had gone, "there is something novel and ingenious in what the underling suggests. I must remember that; and when I have leisure, give ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... with Stuart's opinion of the plot of which Cecil was the head. Here, in Vellano, was an underling—or another conspirator, as it might be—favorable to England, resentful of the United States, and probably in a spirit of revolt against existing conditions in his own country. The boy decided to test this ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... were vain and amorous; not, like the other's, eloquent and raging. When they wanted her to preach, she could only utter sorry things. Michaelis was fain to play out the piece by himself. As chief inquisitor, and bound greatly to outdo his Flemish underling, he avowed that he had already drawn out of this small body a host of six thousand, six hundred, and sixty devils: only a hundred still remained. By way of convincing the public, he made her throw up the charm or spell which by his account she had swallowed, and he drew it ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... ancestress of the Messiah. The time was approaching when she was to become the wife of Solomon (89) and reign as queen in Jerusalem. God therefore led the royal wanderer to the capital city of Ammon. (90) Solomon took service as an underling with the cook in the royal household, and he proved himself so proficient in the culinary art that the king of Ammon raised him to the post of chief cook. Thus he came under the notice of the king's daughter Naamah, who fell in love with her father's cook. In vain her parents endeavored ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... them, now and then, the twinkle of humor shone. He had a conciliatory way with those beneath him, and he considered all the mill hands in that class. To his superiors he was a frowning, yet daring and even presumptuous underling. ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore



Words linked to "Underling" :   supporter, cog, second banana, subordinate, subsidiary, second fiddle, associate, bottom dog, helper



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