undertow

undertow

1. A strong undercurrent, as in the ocean. There's a really powerful undertow today, so I think the kids should stay out of the water.
2. A contrasting tone or aspect in art or literature. That movie is advertised as a comedy, but the humor has a strong undertow of sadness and despair.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • from sea to shining sea
  • Davy
  • Davy Jones's locker
  • tone down
  • an ocean of (something)
  • an ocean of something
  • ocean
  • come on in, the water's fine
  • Come on in, the water's fine!
  • cry an ocean
References in periodicals archive
In the case of Undertow, the primary way the film pushes against expectation is its presentation of nudity--particularly through depictions of the pregnant body and non-sexualised explorations of Claire's mindset through the bare physical form.
While wading in Lake Michigan, Josephine and her sister Esther were swept from their footing and drifted in a strong undertow to water seven-feet deep, three hundred feet from shore.
The currents that may affect you, as you swim ashore, are rip currents and undertows.
This was beautifully paced and imaginatively balanced throughout, but one would have wished to have actually heard the lugubrious gong intended to underpin a heart-stopping undertow from lower strings and timpani.
The undertow, while surreptitious in nature, will have a direct, unconcealed impact on both commercial and residential real estate.
Geoff Sharp's warnings of neo-authoritarian drift are not rendered less urgent by the use of the word 'drift', particularly where the undertow threatens to become a rip.
Whatever its satiric undertow, Ye Olde Ruin, 2003-2004, one of two immense Paul Noble drawings included in "Ecstasy," offers an unabashedly fantastic otherworld of abstract machines, hermetic eggs, and Boschean play.
Director David Gordon Green (Undertow) is writing the script--a fact that piqued Rudin's interest.
Yet it is essential if this country is to be one in which we can all live together without being terrified by an undertow of uncaring violence of which Happy Slapping is only the most recent and obscene example.
In "Undertow," author Lorena McCourtney has crafted an engrossing mystery.
On March 27, 2002, girlfriends Hayden Strickland and Jennifer Jackson, both 14, were wading in the Gulf of Mexico near Panama City Beach, Florida, when an undertow kept them from returning to the beach.
At once she was caught in the undertow of the ship, released, only to be grabbed again.
While some might see Seducing Doctor Lewis as yet another whimsical, feel-good picture about eccentric yokels, the movie has an undertow of pathos that deepens it.
"The problem is, in the current Japanese economy, with a flat nominal GDP and deflationary undertow, you're not guaranteed rental tenants," he adds, pointing to the fears that a good chunk of the Shiodome City Center would be vacant after a merger between prospective tenants Mitsui Chemicals Inc.