Word.ws English Dictionary

underburn

underburn verb: to burn up.

Verb

underburn (third-person singular simple present underburns, present participle underburning, simple past and past participle underburned or underburnt)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To burn up.
  2. (transitive) To burn too little.

Noun

underburn (plural underburns)

  1. The deliberate burning of surface fuel so as to leave the tree canopy intact.

Forms of underburn

Verb
third-person singular presentunderburns
present participleunderburning
past participleunderburned
pastunderburned
past participleunderburnt
pastunderburnt
Noun
pluralunderburns

Origin of underburn

From Middle English underbrennen (“to set on fire, burn up”), equivalent to under- + burn.

Questions about underburn

What does underburn mean?
Underburn means to burn up.
What part of speech is underburn?
Underburn can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of underburn?
The past tense of underburn is underburned.

Words near underburn in the dictionary

  1. underburdened
  2. underburdening
  3. underburdens
  4. underburied
  5. underburies
  6. underburn
  7. underburned
  8. underburning
  9. underburns
  10. underburnt
  11. underbury

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: underburn (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-underburn.wav.

Cite this entry: “underburn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/underburn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.