underimpress

underimpress

English

Etymology

    From under- + impress.

    Pronunciation

    • Audio (US):(file)

    Verb

    underimpress (third-person singular simple present underimpresses, present participle underimpressing, simple past and past participle underimpressed)

    1. (transitive) To impress less than expected; to disappoint, to underwhelm.
      • 2001 September 13, Joan Williams, Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It[1], Oxford University Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 230:
        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.
      • 2014, Tod Davies, “Three: Food for Home”, in Jam Today Too, United States: Exterminating Angel Press, →ISBN:
        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.
      • 2020 August 25, Niruj Agrawal, Rafey Faruqui, Mayur Bodani, Oxford Textbook of Neuropsychiatry (Oxford Textbooks in Psychiatry)‎[2], Oxford University Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 524:
        Just as too much scientific evidence and medical detail may overwhelm or underimpress the court, the opinion should not contain too much 'heart-searching' and repetitive reasoning.