underdrawn
underdrawn is the past participle of underdraw.
Meaning of underdraw
Verb
underdraw (third-person singular simple present underdraws, present participle underdrawing, simple past underdrew, past participle underdrawn)
- To cover or line the underside of (a floor or roof) with plasterwork, boarding or other such treatment.
- The [roof] had never been underdrawn, its entire anatomy lay bare to an inquiring eye, except where a frame of wood laden with oatcakes, and clusters of legs of beef, mutton and ham, concealed it.1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter I, in Wuthering Heights: […], volume I, London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […], →OCLC, page 6
- To take or draw less than one needs or is entitled to.
- You say for month and months you had been underdrawing? — Always underdrawing and giving up every month. Whatever we drew the officer signed an indent for and we gave up a surplus.1906, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Parliamentary Papers: 1850-1908 - Volume 57
- To represent inadequately in an artistic depiction, or in words.
- To sketch a work of art in chalk, pencil, or other temporary medium prior to painting, inking, or otherwise making the final work.
- Here was the warrant (or at least a justification) not just for Steig's drawings of people as bodily symptoms but, more important, for his abandoning underdrawing in pencil prepartory to inking in a drawing.2005, Iain Topliss, The Comic Worlds of Peter Arno, William Steig, Charles Addams and Saul Steinberg, page 108
Questions about underdrawn
- What is underdrawn the past participle of?
- Underdrawn is the past participle of underdraw.
Words near underdrawn in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: underdrawn (page history and authors); underdraw (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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Cite this entry: “underdrawn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/underdrawn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
