underdeveloped
adjective, verb
underdeveloped is an adjective meaning “immature and not fully developed” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled U-N-D-E-R-D-E-V-E-L-O-P-E-D and has 5 syllables, and it appears about once in every 1 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does underdeveloped mean?
adjective
- 1
immature and not fully developed
- 2
having a low level of economic productivity and technological sophistication
- 3
of a film that has had insufficient development before being fixed
verb
- 1
simple past and past participle of underdevelop
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce underdeveloped?
Underdeveloped has 5 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-underdeveloped.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of underdeveloped
- more underdeveloped comparative
- most underdeveloped superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is underdeveloped?
Underdeveloped appears about once in every 1 million words in written English, the 29,270th 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).
Underdeveloped in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense having a low level of economic productivity and technological sophistication:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | sous-développé |
| German | unterentwickelt |
| Portuguese | subdesenvolvido |
| Spanish | subdesarrollado |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.