Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.

Undertow

Definition: Undertow

Undertow

Noun

1. An inclination contrary to the strongest or prevailing feeling; "his account had a poignant undertow of regret".

2. The seaward undercurrent created after waves have broken on the shore.

Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
 

Date "undertow" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1912. (references)


Specialty Definition: Undertow

DomainDefinition

Geography

An undercurrent flowing down the beach near the bottom of the water, the result of a back-flow of water piled up on the beach by a breaking wave. Source: European Union. (references)

Mining

The seaward return flow, near the bottom of a sloping beach, of water thatwas carried onto the shore by waves. CF:rip current. (references)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Specialty Definition: Undertow

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

For the common noun "undertow", see rip current.

Undertow, alternative-rock band Tool's first full-length album, released in 1993, brought Tool into the spotlight, along with their crushing performance at Lollapolooza 1993, an annual rock and metal festival.

Consisting of 10 songs, this album deals with issues with relationships, issues with childhood, issues with drugs, and even incorporates some optimism with the song "4 Degrees", a song seemingly about reaching a higher consciousness/letting go of oneself through sexual intercourse.

Although frontman Maynard James Keenan doesn't use a wide variety of pitches, he certainly uses a lot of tones. His tones range from angry to hopeful to possessed, all within the span of one song. Danny Carey's drumming is especially noticeable in the 5+ minute anger-fest entitled Crawl Away about a relationship falling apart; one person fading, or "crawling" away, and the other trying desperately to hold it together.

Guitarist Adam Jones and bassist Paul D'Amour work well together on the song Prison Sex, to create a strangely melodic and peaceful atmosphere amidst a barrage of disturbing vocals from lead singer Keenan.

The atmosphere of the album is topped off by depictions of large naked women and the band members posing with pins in the sides of their heads in the liner notes, which caused quite a controversy across The United States and North America, and was removed from the shelves of most large retail chains.

Track listing

Charting singles

1993  Undertow       The Billboard 200               No. 50
1993  Undertow       Heatseekers                     No. 1
1993  Sober          Mainstream Rock Tracks          No. 13
1994  Prison Sex     Mainstream Rock Tracks          No. 32
1994  Sober          Mainstream Rock Tracks          No. 23

Personnel

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Undertow."

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Synonyms: Undertow

Synonyms: sea purse (n), sea puss (n), sea-poose (n), sea-purse (n), sea-puss (n). (additional references)

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Modern Usage: Undertow

DomainUsage

Movie/TV Titles

Undertow (1949)

The Undertow (1916)

Caught in the Undertow (1902)

The Undertow (2003)

Undertow (1999)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Commercial Usage: Undertow

DomainTitle

Books

  

Music

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Non-Fiction Usage: Undertow

SubjectTopicQuote

Travel

Cote D'ivoire

The undertow has swept good swimmers out to sea. (references)

Ecuador

Travelers to Ecuador's beach areas should be aware that strong currents, undertow, and underwater hazards are common and are not posted. (references)

Ghana

While the salt water at the ocean beaches near Accra is relatively clean, the strong surf and treacherous undertow are extremely dangerous. (references)

Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits.

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Usage Frequency: Undertow

"Undertow" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Undertow" is used about 36 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)
Parts of SpeechPercentUsage per
100 Million Words
Rank in English
Noun (singular)100%3657,479

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Undertow

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.
 
ExpressionFrequency
per Day

undertow

68

tool undertow

17

lyrics tool undertow

6

undertow movie

4

ocean undertow

4

lyrics undertow

3

current undertow

2

software undertow

2

bar beach undertow

2

destin undertow

2
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Modern Translation: Undertow

Language Translations for "undertow"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.

Albanian

  

tërheqje e dallgës, rrymë e nënujshme. (various references)

   

Arabic 

  

‏تيار قوي تحت سطح الماء, ‏تيار تحتي (undercurrent). (various references)

   

Czech

  

spodní protiproud. (various references)

   

Danish

  

understroem (undercurrent), bundstroem. (various references)

   

Dutch

  

ondervloed, bodemstroom. (various references)

   

French

  

tension, reflux, flot de fond, courant sous-marin (undercurrent), courant de fond, courant de flot de fond, contre-courant. (various references)

   

German

  

Sog (maelstrom, pull, slipstream, suction, vortex, wake). (various references)

   

Greek 

  

ρεύμα πυθμένα, ρεύμα από την επιφάνεια του ύδατοσ, αντίρευμα. (various references)

   

Hebrew 

  

זרם תחתי (undercurrent). (various references)

   

Hungarian

  

hullámtalálkozás, hullámtörés (breach, surf). (various references)

   

Italian

  

risacca (alluvium, backwash), flutto di fondo, corrente di flutto. (various references)

   

Manx

  

cooyl-stroo (back-set, slipstream). (various references)

   

Pig Latin

  

ertowunday

   

Portuguese

  

ressaca (backwater, breakers, hangover, surf, underset, wash), recuo das ondas, corrente submarina (undercurrent). (various references)

   

Russian 

  

отлив прибоя, нижняя жила (underset). (various references)

   

Serbo-Croatian

  

struja ispod morske površine. (various references)

   

Spanish

  

resaca (backwash, hangover, kickback, redraft). (various references)

   

Swedish

  

underström (undercurrent, underflow). (various references)

   

Turkish

  

ters yönlü dip akıntısı, kıyıya çarpan dalgaların geriye gidişi. (various references)

   

Ukrainian

  

відкочування (backwash, underset). (various references)

Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

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Derivations & Misspellings: Undertow

Derivations

Words beginning with "undertow": undertows. (additional references)


Misspellings

"Undertow" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Unberto, undergown, undertoe. (additional references)

Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

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Anagrams: Undertow

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams

Words within the letters "d-e-n-o-r-t-u-w"

-1 letter: outdrew, rewound.

-2 letters: detour, downer, enduro, redout, rodent, rotund, routed, tenour, toured, trowed, turned, undoer, undrew, untrod, wonder, wonted.

-3 letters: donut, doter, dower, drone, drown, endow, noted, noter, nuder, outed, outer, outre, owned, owner, redon, rewon, rouen, round, route, rowed, rowen, tenor, toned, toner, towed, tower, trend, trode, trone, trued, tuned, tuner, under.

 Words containing the letters "d-e-n-o-r-t-u-w"
 

+1 letter: undertows.

 

+2 letters: outfrowned, underwrote.

 

+3 letters: countrywide, groundwater, outwardness, undergrowth.

 

+4 letters: counterworld, groundwaters, southernwood, undergrowths, untowardness.

 

+5 letters: counterworlds, outwardnesses, southernwoods, thundershower.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.

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Alternative Orthography: Undertow


Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)

55 6E 64 65 72 74 6F 77

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)

American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)

=

Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)

Braille (1829, in France) (references)

Morse Code (1836) (references)

..-    -.    -..    .    .-.    -    ---    .--.

Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)

Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)

01010101 01101110 01100100 01100101 01110010 01110100 01101111 01110111

HTML Code (1990) (references)

&#85 &#110 &#100 &#101 &#114 &#116 &#111 &#119

ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)

0055 006E 0064 0065 0072 0074 006F 0077

British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)

Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)

5580707184868189

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INDEX

1. Definition
2. Synonyms
3. Usage: Modern
4. Usage: Commercial
5. Quotations: Non-fiction
6. Usage Frequency
7. Expressions: Internet
8. Translations: Modern
9. Derivations
10. Anagrams
11. Orthography
12. Bibliography


  

Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.