underpowered

underpowered

English

Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

    From underpower + -ed.

    Verb

    underpowered

    1. simple past and past participle of underpower

    Etymology 2

      From under- + powered.

      Adjective

      underpowered (comparative more underpowered, superlative most underpowered)

      1. Having insufficient power for its operation.
        • 1925, Stewart Edward White, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Chapter 2,[1]
          [] 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.
        • 1945, Neville Shute, chapter 4, in Most Secret[2], New York: William Morrow & Co., page 111:
          The old under-powered van ground its way very noisily and rather slowly up the long steep hill out of the town.
        • 2023, David Shariatmadari, “‘I hope I’m wrong’: the co-founder of DeepMind on how AI threatens to reshape life as we know it,” The Guardian, 2 September, 2023,[3]
          Last month he [Mustafa Suleyman] was invited to the White House alongside Amazon, Microsoft and Google to sign up to an oversight regime, albeit a voluntary one. Given tech’s poor record at self-regulation, this may seem a little underpowered.
      2. (gaming) Not powerful enough.
        Wizards are underpowered even though they start off with two magic spells.
      Antonyms
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