noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A lowered expectation or hope. countable, uncountable

   "Of baffled struggling crowds and broken cries And the great stedfast underhope that never dies."

Example

More examples

"Of baffled struggling crowds and broken cries And the great stedfast underhope that never dies."

Etymology

Perhaps from Middle English underhopen (“to consider as secondary, discount”), equivalent to under- + hope.

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