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WotD: Underbelly
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Do you ever watch those real-life police shows on TV that tend to show the underbelly of society?
A reporter or documentary director will ride along with police officers on their shift so that we, the viewers, can observe what it is like to be a police officer for a day.
They tend to show us the dirty and unpleasant side of society.
The police regularly deal with drug dealers, thieves, the sex industry and who knows what else as part of their everyday activities.
That’s the underbelly of society.
It’s the part of society law-abiding people would rather avoid.
I don’t think it’s only outside your home, though.
The Internet has a dark underbelly too.
Hackers, sex trafficking, child porn and the dark web are all part of the underbelly of society.
These also are places you’d probably not want to visit on your computer and bring into your home.
Underbelly can also have another meaning.
It can also mean the weakest members of something.
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Right now, restaurants and small businesses are proving to be the soft underbelly of the economy.
They are proving to be the ones who need the most government assistance and run the most risk of going out of business.
Many of them already have.
Notice, though, that I used the words ‘soft underbelly‘ to indicate I was talking about weakness and not illegal activity.
That’s often how the difference is made.
You could also use the word vulnerable.
Either way, you never want to be named as part of the underbelly of anything.
It’s never a nice place to be, whether you are on the wrong side of the law or the economy.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 66.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.
