underwhelm

English

Etymology

From under- +‎ whelm: a humorous coinage by novel negation of overwhelm first recorded in the 1950s.

Pronunciation

• Audio (US):

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Verb

underwhelm (third-person singular simple present underwhelms, present participle underwhelming, simple past and past participle underwhelmed)

1. To fail to impress; to perform disappointingly.
   • 2021 August 5, Shira Ovide, “YouTube Is Underwhelming”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     The fact that I even mentioned YouTube in the same paragraph as the middling TV company ViacomCBS and Twitter … well, that says something about how YouTube has underwhelmed for some time.

Antonyms

• overawe, overwhelm

Translations

fail to impress

• Dutch: teleurstellen (nl)
• Finnish: olla mitäänsanomaton
• French: décevoir (fr), laisser sur sa faim (fr)
• German: enttäuschen (de), (rare) unterwältigen
• Hebrew: no equivalent term in Hebrew, but see לֹא לְהַרְשִׁים (ló l'harshím, literally “to not impress”)
• Hungarian: alulmúlja a várakozásait, csalódást kelt/okoz
• Ido: deceptar (io)
• Polish: rozczarować (pl)
• Portuguese: desapontar (pt)
• Romanian: dezamăgi (ro), decepționa (ro), deziluziona (ro)
• Russian: разочарова́ть (ru) (razočarovátʹ), разочаро́вывать (ru) (razočaróvyvatʹ)
• Spanish: decepcionar (es)

See also

• anticlimax
• damp squib