Word.ws English Dictionary

underpowered

underpowered is the simple past and past participle of underpower.

Adjective

underpowered (comparative more underpowered, superlative most underpowered)

  1. Having insufficient power for its operation.
    • […] occasionally a flap-skitter duck, making up his mind to go a-visiting, gave himself over to the serious business of flight. Flap-flap-flap, skitter, skitter, skitter, went he, taxi-ing along like an underpowered airplane, leaving behind him incredible churnings of wake.1925, Stewart Edward White, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Chapter 2
    • The old under-powered van ground its way very noisily and rather slowly up the long steep hill out of the town.1945, Neville Shute, chapter 4, in Most Secret, New York: William Morrow & Co., page 111
  2. Not powerful enough.
    • Wizards are underpowered even though they start off with two magic spells.

Meaning of underpower

Verb

underpower (third-person singular simple present underpowers, present participle underpowering, simple past and past participle underpowered)

  1. (transitive) To supply with insufficient power.

Antonyms of underpowered

Forms of underpowered

comparativemore underpowered
superlativemost underpowered

Origin of underpowered

From underpower + -ed.

From under- + powered.

Questions about underpowered

What does underpowered mean?
Underpowered means having insufficient power for its operation.
What is underpowered the simple past and past participle of?
Underpowered is the simple past and past participle of underpower.
What part of speech is underpowered?
Underpowered is an adjective.

Words near underpowered in the dictionary

  1. underpour
  2. underpoured
  3. underpouring
  4. underpours
  5. underpower
  6. underpowered
  7. underpowering
  8. underpowers
  9. underpraise
  10. underpraised
  11. underpraises

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: underpowered (page history and authors); underpower (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-underpowered.wav.

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