underdeliver
underdeliver verb: to deliver less, or at an inferior level, than promised or expected.
Verb
underdeliver (third-person singular simple present underdelivers, present participle underdelivering, simple past and past participle underdelivered)
- To deliver less, or at an inferior level, than promised or expected
- […] the result was a warning to all exhibition organisers about the dangers of overpromising and underdelivering when promoting events.2009 March 3, “Promoters fake Howard support”, in Herald Sun
- Hope Hicks, one of the President’s longest-serving aides, warned Parscale against touting ticket request numbers, reminding him that the number one rule in politics is not to overpromise and underdeliver, a source familiar with the matter said.2020 July 13, Michael Warren, Jeremy Diamond, Ryan Nobles and Fredreka Schouten, “Amid rising coronavirus cases, the Trump campaign struggles to get its rally machine going”, in CNN
Forms of underdeliver
| third-person singular present | underdelivers |
|---|---|
| present participle | underdelivering |
| past participle | underdelivered |
| past | underdelivered |
Origin of underdeliver
From under- + deliver.
Questions about underdeliver
- What does underdeliver mean?
- Underdeliver means to deliver less, or at an inferior level, than promised or expected.
- What part of speech is underdeliver?
- Underdeliver is a verb.
- What is the past tense of underdeliver?
- The past tense of underdeliver is underdelivered.
Words near underdeliver in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: underdeliver (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-underdeliver.wav.
Cite this entry: “underdeliver.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/underdeliver. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.