Having trouble with this sentence and how to figure out the exact meaning of compound words?


> それ以外、つまり冒険者の半数以上は未だLV1 **のもとで燃え燻っている。**

I am having trouble understanding the last part of this sentence. What does
のもとで do here?

Also, how do you figure out the exact meaning of compound words? I tried
looking up 燃え燻る but I can't find it in a dictionary. The story I'm reading has
a lot of these words that I can't find in a dictionary.

Thanks!




～のもとで means "under (control of) ～", of course, but I think this usage of もとで
is not very natural. This sentence would have been perfectly fine without that
(i.e., "未だLV1で燃え燻っている"). Or maybe the author wanted to express a feeling of
"can't get rid of the LV1 group" by using that. Anyway, I recommend that you
don't try to learn something new from this part.

燃え燻る seems to be very rare (I couldn't find another example of this
combination in BCCWJ Corpus), but I think it's just a literary variation of
燻る. 燻【くすぶ】る literally means 'to smolder, to burn without flame', but it often
figuratively means 'to be without much success', 'to live idly, just waiting
for a chance', etc.




～のもとで means "under (control of) ～", of course, but I think this usage of もとで
is not very natural. This sentence would have been perfectly fine without that
(i.e., "未だLV1で燃え燻っている"). Or maybe the author wanted to express a feeling of
"can't get rid of the LV1 group" by using that. Anyway, I recommend that you
don't try to learn something new from this part.

燃え燻る seems to be very rare (I couldn't find another example of this
combination in BCCWJ Corpus), but I think it's just a literary variation of
燻る. 燻【くすぶ】る literally means 'to smolder, to burn without flame', but it often
figuratively means 'to be without much success', 'to live idly, just waiting
for a chance', etc.

