Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use underdog in a sentence

15 example sentences · noun

Underdog means a competitor thought unlikely to win. Example: “They were the underdogs in the basketball competition.”

Examples of underdog by meaning

nounA competitor thought unlikely to win.

  • They were the underdogs in the basketball competition.
  • In Athens, the Americans are underdogs to the Chinese and the Canadians (the Canadians!)2004 August 30, The New Yorker, page 40
  • You certainly can’t imagine an American version of Flitcroft’s story: Hollywood finds little ironic joy in shambling, defeated men, which is why they have a monopoly on underdog sports films to begin with.2022 July 23, Guy Lodge, “Streaming: The Phantom of the Open and the best underdog sports films”, in The Guardian, archived from the...

More sentences with underdog

  • He used to be a voice for the underdog until he sold out.From the entry sell out
  • It’s part of our psyche – underneath it all we side with the underdog.”2023 November 20, Rory Carroll, Lisa O'Carroll, “‘It’s part of our psyche’: why Ireland sides with ‘underdog’ Palestine”, in The Guardian…. From the entry psyche
  • American comeback narratives are — customarily — uplifting stories that root for the underdog.2018 August 17, Jenny Lee, “Rudy Ghouliani and the art of the American comeback”, in Financial Times, archived from the original on 20 May…. From the entry zomedy
  • Sometimes it takes a scruffy underdog to show the professionals what's what.2011 August 15, Sonia Van Gilder Cooke, “Sangat TV”, in Time. From the entry what's what
  • All my life I was an underdog who was now finally living out my Cinderfella story.2011, Karsheem White-Holman, It Is What It Is: Daze in Da Life of Mr. Can't Get It Right, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 203. From the entry Cinderfella
  • The emotional appeal of the Trickster is that of the perpetual underdog who sometimes beats the odds.1983, Wendy Griswold, “The Devil's Techniques: Cultural Legitimation and Social Change”, in American Sociological Review, volume 48…. From the entry beat the odds
  • I was already a committed infracaninophile, and Gestalt psychology was clearly the underdog in a department that included B.2007, Ulric Neisser, "Ulric Neisser", in Gardner Lindzey and William McKinley Runyan, eds., A History of Psychology in Autobiography…. From the entry infracaninophile
  • Whenever a jacquerie occurred, the authorities looked "upon it as a revolt of the underdog against his native oppressor."1986, G Krishnan-Kutty, Peasantry in India, page 71. From the entry jacquerie
  • At some point in any sports movie, the grossly unqualified underdog will start training to the sound of some inspirational rock song.2013 October 29, Cracked.com, The De-Textbook: The Stuff You Didn't Know About the Stuff You Thought You Knew, Penguin, →ISBN, page 177. From the entry montage
  • On the contrary, they wanted to be portrayed as the underdogs, the democratic Davids fighting the valiant but ultimately hopeless battle against the financial Goliaths.2001, Adam Harmes, Unseen Power, Stoddart Publishing, →ISBN, page 144. From the entry David
  • If European Christiandom and Christiandom the world over, had been an underdog all through the centuries, one might feel sympathetic toward them, despite their absurdities.1963, Alan Fletcher Markun, The new revolution, page 151. From the entry Christiandom
  • They like to convey the spirit of the underdog — that of Israel’s heroic beginnings — as if discomfited by the adornments of an increasingly moneyed, Americanized and postheroic society.2007 July 8, Roger Cohen, “Her Jewish State”, in New York Times. From the entry postheroic

Meaning of underdog

  1. noun A competitor thought unlikely to win.
  2. noun Somebody at a disadvantage.
  3. noun A high swing wherein the person pushing the swing runs beneath the swing while the person being pushed is at the forward limit of the arc.

Full definition of underdog

Questions about underdog in a sentence

How do you use underdog in a sentence?
Underdog is used as a noun. For example: “They were the underdogs in the basketball competition.”
What is a short sentence with underdog?
“They were the underdogs in the basketball competition.”
What does underdog mean?
Underdog means a competitor thought unlikely to win.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: underdog (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use underdog in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/underdog. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.