Underpowered

adj, verb

adj, verb ·4 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    simple past and past participle of underpower form-of, participle, past
Adjective
  1. 1
    Having insufficient power for its operation.

    "1925, Stewart Edward White, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Chapter 2, […] occasionally a flap-skitter duck, making up his mind to go a-visiting, gave himself over to the serious business of flight. Flap-flap-flap, skitter, skitter, skitter, went he, taxi-ing along like an underpowered airplane, leaving behind him incredible churnings of wake."

Example

More examples

"Mennad's garbage disposal is underpowered."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From underpower + -ed.

Etymology 2

From under- + powered.

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