Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In a downward direction; downward.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to the downward or lower part of something; lower; bottom.
  • adjective Lowly.
  • adverb Downward.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English nitherward, from Old English niþerweard ("downward, directed downwards, turned downwards"), equivalent to nether +‎ -ward.

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Examples

  • And although Anna and her sister adulteresses Emma Bovary and Tess still mesmerize us by plunging spectacularly netherward through their societies, heat tiles flying for all to see, in modern times a transgressor's extravagant death by train, arsenic, or even that deliciously gothic twist from the court ladies of Imperial China — eating one's own jewelry — no longer cuts it.

    The Great Escape 2005

  • And although Anna and her sister adulteresses Emma Bovary and Tess still mesmerize us by plunging spectacularly netherward through their societies, heat tiles flying for all to see, in modern times a transgressor's extravagant death by train, arsenic, or even that deliciously gothic twist from the court ladies of Imperial China — eating one's own jewelry — no longer cuts it.

    The Great Escape 2005

  • But not a bough of them was visible, a cloak of blackness covering everything netherward; while overhead the windy sky looked down with a strange and disguised face, the three or four stars that alone were visible being so dissociated by clouds that she knew not which they were.

    Two on a Tower 2006

  • In the past couple of weeks, a good part of the media-the New York Post and Daily News particularly-but the entire Internet culture, TV cable-box mechanism and glossy-magazine landscape has conspired to make the American glands throb with blown-up photographs of Britney Spears presenting netherward.

    Fools for Scandal 2003

  • They left the rock and hunted on, going netherward into a damp swale rich with the odor of places where galax grows, descending through scattered clumps of twisted laurel to a thin creek.

    Cold Mountain Frazier, Charles, 1950- Cold Mountain 2003

  • They left the rock and hunted on, going netherward into a damp swale rich with the odor of places where galax grows, descending through scattered clumps of twisted laurel to a thin creek.

    Cold Mountain Frazier, Charles, 1950- Cold Mountain 1997

  • Midst the mists of the nesses wends netherward ever, 1360

    The Tale of Beowulf Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats Anonymous

  • As I watch'd where you pass'd and was lost in the netherward black of the night,

    Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday A Comprehensive View of Lincoln as Given in the Most Noteworthy Essays, Orations and Poems, in Fiction and in Lincoln's Own Writings Various 1921

  • As I watch’d where you pass’d and was lost in the netherward black of the night,

    When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd 1909

  • As I watch’d where you pass’d and was lost in the netherward black of the night,

    When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d 1900

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