Underdevelopment

noun

noun ·6 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The condition of being underdeveloped. countable, uncountable

    "Drawing on insights from thinkers such as Karl Marx, Aimé Césaire and Mahatma Gandhi, they pointed out that underdevelopment in the global South was not a natural condition, but a consequence of the way Western powers had organised the world system over hundreds of years."

  2. 2
    (photography) inadequate processing of film resulting in inadequate contrast wordnet
  3. 3
    state of inadequate development wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
deficiencyimmaturityinadequacyunderdevelopedness

Example

More examples

"How is Algeria fighting its way out of underdevelopment?"

Etymology

From under- + development.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.