All 3 Uses of
undermine
in
Hiroshima, by John Hersey
- Toshio, the boy, apparently had some freedom to move, because she could feel him undermining the pile of wood and tiles as she worked from above.†
Chpt 2 *undermining = weakening gradually
- Down in Hiroshima, the flood took up where the bomb had left off — swept away bridges that had survived the blast, washed out streets, undermined foundations of buildings that still stood — and ten miles to the west the Ono Army Hospital, where a team of experts from Kyoto Imperial University was studying the delayed affliction of the patients, suddenly slid down a beautiful, pine-dark mountainside into the Inland Sea and drowned most of the investigators and their mysteriously diseased patients alike.†
Chpt 4undermined = weakened gradually
- A few years later, a subterranean waterway began to undermine it, and she saw to its replacement with a more modern building, of reinforced concrete, with single and double rooms fitted with Western-style washbasins and toilets.†
Chpt 5undermine = weaken gradually