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What is "underdeveloped"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
underdeveloped
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
an underdeveloped country (=poor and developing more slowly than others)
▪ The disease still exists, mainly in underdeveloped countries.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
country
▪ However, he is not so undiplomatic as to resist the horrendous hospitality of overindulgent underdeveloped countries.
▪ This pole excludes underdeveloped countries from any participation.
▪ I presume you wish to help underdeveloped countries but I fear you could do them considerable harm.
▪ The West creates its power through military research, which forces underdeveloped countries to become passive consumers.
▪ The high rates of unemployment so characteristic of underdeveloped countries make women especially vulnerable.
▪ They are sometimes, especially in underdeveloped countries, illiterate.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ The baby weighed only 1.4 pounds and had underdeveloped lungs.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ In other words, there have been more military coups in underdeveloped than in developed countries.
▪ Its leadership would be concentrated in more and more reduced elites from developed countries and in consistent minorities from the underdeveloped.
▪ She still needs oxygen for her underdeveloped lungs and needs several different drugs every day.
▪ The debate about who should pay what tax in the underdeveloped world has moved centre stage.
▪ The West creates its power through military research, which forces underdeveloped countries to become passive consumers.
▪ We are a poor, underdeveloped nation.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
underdeveloped

1892, in photography, from under + past participle of develop (v.). In reference to countries or regions, recorded from 1949.

Wiktionary
underdeveloped

  1. 1 immature and not fully developed 2 having a low level of economic productivity and technological sophistication 3 (context photography English) of a film that has had insufficient development before being fixed v

  2. (en-past of: underdevelop)

WordNet
underdeveloped

  1. adj. relating to societies in which capital needed to industrialize is in short supply [syn: developing]

  2. not yet fully developed

  3. (of a photograph) lacking in contrast because it was left in the developer for less than the required time

Usage examples of "underdeveloped".

Already I know Carrie is malnourished, underexercised and underdeveloped for her age.

Bergstrasse, Upper Franconia including the Fichtel Mountains, even Weimar in the Russian occupation zone -- where he stops at the Hotel Elephant -- and the Bavarian Forest, an underdeveloped region.

As the narrator of his own barbarism, Joel seemed more like a confused, emotionally underdeveloped man than anything else.

Why was it that fashion designers wanted women to look underdeveloped, like young boys?

Still, the Empire was underdeveloped, India slept in the Middle Ages, the Dominions lay empty, with foreigners jealously barred out, and even England was full of slums and unemployment.

Afghanistan is one of the most underdeveloped countries in the world, whereas Iraq was one of the most modern in the Arab world--a relative statement but still a significant one.

This is more likely against a modernized, developed state than an underdeveloped government.

The Open Conspiracy proposes to end and shows how an end may be put to that huge substratum of underdeveloped, undereducated, subjugated, exploited, and frustrated lives upon which such civilization as the world has known hitherto has rested, and upon which most of our social systems still rest.

She had turned out to be a monumentally unfussy eater, but in sheer capacity she belied the scrawny underdeveloped frame.

Dogs are the hieroglyphs of blind emotion, inferiority, servile attachment, and gregariousness -- the attributes of commonplace, stupidly passionate, and intellectually and imaginatively underdeveloped men.

Something like brokering the galaxy's high technologies to underdeveloped backwater planets, like that dump of a world Tatooine.

They told themselves that Hobbs Land was probably quite nice, just underendowed to start with and pitifully underdeveloped.

Nor will I let Russia deceive us, play us for fools, make us keep hands off while they are getting ready to take over the independent, underdeveloped nations of Africa through intimidation and terror.

Many underdeveloped terrestrial nations have enacted tax moratoria to promote industrial development.