below the belt

1. 1.

   disregarding the rules (from the notion of an illegal low blow in boxing)

   “her accusations were below the belt”

   Similarunfair

   boxing

1. 1.

   in an unfair manner

   “they dealt with him unfairly”

   “their accusations hit below the belt”

   Synonymsunfairly

Questions about below the belt

What does below the belt mean?

below the belt means "disregarding the rules (from the notion of an illegal low blow in boxing)". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for below the belt?

Close synonyms include unfairly. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is below the belt a common word?

below the belt is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.