Word.ws English Dictionary

underperson

underperson noun: a person of low status.

Noun

underperson (plural underpeople)

  1. A person of low status.
    • If you bargained for overlords and underpeople. Then you surely bargained for death instead of life.1910, The Conservator - Volumes 21-22, page 51
    • It has always been easy to kill an underperson, a savage, a worthless person, a sinner who is not like us, ...2001, Jerome Lofgren, Suquamish, →ISBN, page 172
  2. A member of a subhuman sentient species.
    • For I felt sure these underpeople had taken it.1895, Herbert George Wells, The Time Machine, page 118
    • Life is no longer the long, easy ride the true men are accustomed to, and although life is not exactly fraught with peril, the true men learn of vulnerability and danger, things that the underpeople have long lived with.2001, Karen L. Hellekson, The Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith, →ISBN, page 69

Examples of underperson in a sentence

  • Changing one's status as an underperson living in an underworld often sounds better than it is in fact since the transition is long and difficult.2013, W.K. Bickel, R.J. DeGrandpre, Drug Policy and Human Nature, →ISBN:
  • The Administrator sent me here on a crazy errand, killing an unknown underperson.2012, Gardner Dozois, A Day in the Life, →ISBN:

Forms of underperson

pluralunderpeople

Origin of underperson

From under- + person.

Questions about underperson

What does underperson mean?
Underperson means a person of low status.
How do you use underperson in a sentence?
Changing one's status as an underperson living in an underworld often sounds better than it is in fact since the transition is long and difficult.
What part of speech is underperson?
Underperson is a noun.
What is the plural of underperson?
The plural of underperson is underpeople.

Words near underperson in the dictionary

  1. underperformers
  2. underperforming
  3. underperforms
  4. underperfused
  5. underperfusion
  6. underperson
  7. underpersonalization
  8. underpersonalize
  9. underpersonalized
  10. underpersonalizes
  11. underpersonalizing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: underperson (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-underperson.wav.

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