Under by itself is a rather boring word, you know, under the moon, under the sea, under the influence, which is not hard to be if you’ve been hypnotised or after a few drinks.

Under is anything beneath something else.

But let’s add it to some other words like,

Underrated, which means it is better than what others give it credit for.

Underwear is what you would wear underneath your clothes.

An understudy is a person who takes over a lead role when the lead is incapacitated. And how many understudies are guilty of harming the lead, in order to get a big break?

And not get away with it?

Understood, an agreement that might or might not be in writing that something will happen, that is, it is understood that I will be the next president.

Or not. Who on earth would really want to be president of anything?

So in the spirit of trying to confuse everyone all of the time, I have a conundrum in the form of a question, what is the difference between under and underneath?

To me there is none, you can be under the sea or underneath the sea, or under the table or underneath the table, but then there’s another, you can be under the influence but not underneath the influence, though technically you could, if you wanted to use confusing English.

And, just to add to the confusion further, I can say that the submarine sailed under the sea, underneath the sea, but, in actual fact, it doesn’t.

What is under the sea is the sand, or sea bed, and a submarine does not plough its way through the sand, does it?

What we really should be saying is that a submarine moves through the water.

Just saying…