underdetermined
adjective, verb
underdetermined is an adjective meaning “Having too few constraints to specify a unique solution” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled U-N-D-E-R-D-E-T-E-R-M-I-N-E-D, and it appears about once in every 72 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does underdetermined mean?
adjective
- 1
Having too few constraints to specify a unique solution.
verb
- 1
simple past and past participle of underdetermine
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce underdetermined?
- US
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-underdetermined.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of underdetermined
- more underdetermined comparative
- most underdetermined superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is underdetermined?
Underdetermined appears about once in every 72 million words in written English, the 269,040th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does underdetermined come from?
From under- + determined.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).