subbasement

noun

sub·​base·​ment ˌsəb-ˈbās-mənt 

variants or sub-basement

plural subbasements or sub-basements

: a basement or an underground story located below the main basement of a building

… describing in loving detail the enormous, complex structure from the bottom up, its subbasement … is full of gleaming pipes, turbines and boilers.

—Burton Bernstein

Examples of subbasement in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The building was used to bottle and distribute milk to retail locations by train — the train tracks are still located in the subbasement of the building. —Caroline Linton, CBS News, 1 Oct. 2024

Reading them has become our favorite — and often only — form of recreation here under the flickering fluorescent lights in the subbasement mailroom at the Department of Data. —Andrew Van Dam, Washington Post, 14 June 2024

For one thing, the hotel’s reputation had plummeted into its subbasement, with mocking public complaints about peeling wallpaper, worn furniture and bedbugs. —Dan Barry, New York Times, 2 Mar. 2023

Halley Zelicoff, a food stylist, has been to 30 of Mr. Trinidad’s dinners, including the first, which was held in a subbasement of a warehouse. —Robert Simonson, New York Times, 9 Nov. 2022

My second magnetic resonance defecography is in the subbasement of Mount Sinai. —Cara Schacter, New York Times, 2 Oct. 2022

But Powell was struck by the show’s final scene in the building’s subbasement where five men were taking out mountains of trash. —Carmine Gallo, Forbes, 19 Oct. 2021

The earth proves to have a subbasement utopia of pale, wise beings who fear and marvel at their visitors. —Paul Collins, The New Yorker, 28 Nov. 2020

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1776, in the meaning defined above