underimpress
underimpress verb: to impress less than expected; to disappoint, to underwhelm.
Verb
underimpress (third-person singular simple present underimpresses, present participle underimpressing, simple past and past participle underimpressed)
- To impress less than expected; to disappoint, to underwhelm.
- The tendency for judges to be overly impressed by family work done by fathers and underimpressed by that done by mothers shows how women can be made vulnerable by a standard designed around gender rather than around sex.2001 September 13, Joan Williams, Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 230
- Farmed trout, which used to underimpress me with its boring tastelessness, has gone through some kind of taste revolution: it's absolutely terrific, now, whenever I buy it.2014, Tod Davies, “Three: Food for Home”, in Jam Today Too, United States: Exterminating Angel Press, →ISBN
Forms of underimpress
| third-person singular present | underimpresses |
|---|---|
| present participle | underimpressing |
| past participle | underimpressed |
| past | underimpressed |
Origin of underimpress
From under- + impress.
Questions about underimpress
- What does underimpress mean?
- Underimpress means to impress less than expected; to disappoint, to underwhelm.
- What part of speech is underimpress?
- Underimpress is a verb.
- What is the past tense of underimpress?
- The past tense of underimpress is underimpressed.
Words near underimpress in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: underimpress (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-underimpress.wav.
Cite this entry: “underimpress.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/underimpress. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
