Subdued emotional quality underlying an utterance

Usage examples of undercurrent.

He laughed with a little undercurrent of scorn in his laughter,-- and Theos saw as it were, the lightning of an angry or disdainful thought flashing through the sombre splendor of his eyes.

Congress was the strong undercurrent of Anglophobia that had run through the American psyche since the Revolution and which would not entirely disappear until the United States entered World War I on the side of Britain.

While our hero stalked ahead, stroking his luxuriant whiskers ever and anon, we pursued him at an interval so great that not the most alert citizen of Little Arcady could have suspected this sinister undercurrent to his simple life.

And, being acutely aware of all undercurrents here, Hume wondered what the small civ had actually seen.

The undercurrents of nonacademic publishing were unknown to her, and she was interested in almost everything.

He had no choice now but to offer his services to a man who had involved Pen in the serpentine undercurrents of conflicting diplomacies.

For Comus this first-night performance, with its brilliant gathering of spectators, its groups and coteries of lively talkers, even its counterfoil of dull chatterers, its pervading atmosphere of stage and social movement, and its intruding undercurrent of political flutter, all this composed a tragedy in which he was the chief character.

The constant buzz of lowered voices ran like an undercurrent at the edge of his hearing, phrases caught and lost, curses, muffled laughter and heartfelt weeping, whispered gossip.

Between trainers and jockeys there seemed to be an all-round edginess, sudden outbursts of rancor, and an ebbing and flowing undercurrent of resentment and distrust.

I relied upon my wits, constantly observing, gauging the ebb and flow of hatred, the secret alliances, the undercurrents of despair.

Far under the bridge the river smoothly swam, the undercurrents forever unfolding themselves upon the surface with a vast rose-like evolution, edged all round with faint lines of white, where the air that filled the water freed itself in foam.

She received us with great dignity, but yet there was an agreeable undercurrent in her voice and manner which I thought very promising.

The dark undercurrent of fretfulness and unease bubbled away like a caldron on the boil.

Audra, Colleen didn't feel the undercurrent of jealousy, jealousy that sometimes took form in vicious ways, that she sensed in other girls at the school.

Maybe it was this kind of thing, the undercurrents of unsaid Britishness, that had made her leave England in the first place?