Definition of "underworld" []

• The part of society that is engaged in and organized for the purpose of crime and vice. (noun)
• A region, realm, or dwelling place conceived to be below the surface of the earth. (noun)
• The opposite side of the earth; the antipodes. (noun)
• Greek & Roman Mythology The world of the dead, located below the world of the living; Hades. (noun)
• Archaic The world beneath the heavens; the earth. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Daniel's fall into this underworld is also a flight, for as he falls in love with the mysterious coral thief and she draws him into an audacious plot that will leave him with a future very different from the one he has envisioned for himself, Daniel discovers a radical theory of evolution and mutability that irrevocably changes his conception of the world in which he lives."
• "We have not sufficiently understood, however, that the underworld is at once a lyrical or metaphysical site and a historical place, even if the ambiguity of its material conditions cannot be isolated from the substance of poetry."
• "The Egyptian mythology of judgement in the underworld is all geared around this "weighing" metaphor, though there it's more literal with the soul actually put in the scales."