underrepresentation
noun
underrepresentation is a noun meaning “Insufficient or disproportionately low representation” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled U-N-D-E-R-R-E-P-R-E-S-E-N-T-A-T-I-O-N, and it appears about once in every 12 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of underrepresentation is underrepresentations.
What does underrepresentation mean?
noun
- 1
Insufficient or disproportionately low representation.
We are concerned about the underrepresentation of minorities.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce underrepresentation?
- 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-underrepresentation.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of underrepresentation
- underrepresentations plural
- under-representation
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is underrepresentation?
Underrepresentation appears about once in every 12 million words in written English, the 103,949th 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).
Underrepresentation in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense Translations:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | sous-représentation |
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.
Where does underrepresentation come from?
From under- + representation.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).