Word.ws English Dictionary

underassertive

underassertive adjective: insufficiently assertive.

Adjective

underassertive (comparative more underassertive, superlative most underassertive)

  1. Insufficiently assertive.
    • This problem multiplies even more as Hart and Blackmon report: “Clinical experience shows that underassertive and excessively overassertive ministers are much more likely to suffer from depression, burnout, helplessness and especially problems with anger and resentment."2011, H. B. Jr. London, Neil B. Wiseman, Married to a Pastor, →ISBN
    • I once heard someone offer an underassertive friend a favor and the friend said no in such a roundabout fashion that the person actually thought she'd said yes, and did it anyway.2013, Leigh Thompson, Richard Templar, Choose Your Own Outcome!, →ISBN

Forms of underassertive

comparativemore underassertive
superlativemost underassertive

Origin of underassertive

From under- + assertive.

Words formed from underassertive

Questions about underassertive

What does underassertive mean?
Underassertive means insufficiently assertive.
What part of speech is underassertive?
Underassertive is an adjective.

Words near underassertive in the dictionary

  1. underarticulated
  2. underarticulates
  3. underarticulating
  4. underarticulation
  5. underascertainment
  6. underassertive
  7. underassertively
  8. underassertiveness
  9. underassess
  10. underassessed
  11. underassesses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: underassertive (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-underassertive.wav.

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