Underlie

1. n. See Underlay, n., 1.
2. v. t. To lie under; to rest beneath; to be situated under; as, a stratum of clay underlies the surface gravel.
3. v. t. To be at the basis of; to form the foundation of; to support; as, a doctrine underlying a theory.
4. v. t. To be subject or amenable to.
5. v. i. To lie below or under.

The word meanings were obtained from OPTED(The Online Plain Text English Dictionary), which is based on “The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” which is in turn based on the 1913 US Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (See Project Gutenburg), as a text file.