Underpay

verb

verb ·3 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To pay (someone) less than the value of their work; to pay (someone) insufficiently. transitive

    "The company-city subgenre always seemed to star a hero who outsmarted, overthrew, or escaped "the company." I've never seen one where the hero fought like hell to get taken in and underpaid by the company."

  2. 2
    pay too little wordnet
  3. 3
    To pay less than is due for (something). transitive

    "The underpaid letter was returned to the sender."

Synonyms

All synonyms
short-pay

Example

More examples

"The company-city subgenre always seemed to star a hero who outsmarted, overthrew, or escaped "the company." I've never seen one where the hero fought like hell to get taken in and underpaid by the company."

Etymology

From under- + pay.

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