understage

From under- + stage.

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understage (not comparable)

1. (of machinery etc) underneath the stage

understage (plural understages)

1. (theater) The area beneath a stage.
   • 1900, William Paul Gerhard, Theatres: Their Safety from Fire and Panic, Their Comfort and Healthfulness, page 97:

     When deep pits, required in the understage for the machinery and traps, cannot be drained on account of insufficient depth of the street sewer

   • 1996, James M. Saslow, The Medici wedding of 1589: Florentine festival as Theatrum Mundi, page 86:

     The understage being only 9 feet (5 braccia) high, the mountain had to rise in telescoping stages

   • 2001, Augusto Boal with Adrian Jackson and Candida Blaker, Hamlet and the baker's son: my life in theatre and politics:

     dozens of strapping stage-hands in the understage manipulating warships, cannons dispatching balls of fire, blue smoke.

understage (third-person singular simple present understages, present participle understaging, simple past and past participle understaged)

1. (medicine) To underestimate the severity of a patient's illness

• overstage