The Collaborative International Dictionary
Understrapper \Un"der*strap`per\, n. A petty fellow; an inferior agent; an underling.
This was going to the fountain head at once, not
applying to the understrappers.
--Goldsmith.
Wiktionary
n. 1 Any underling or inferior in office. 2 A freelance operator for MI5.
Usage examples of "understrapper".
Nor did this well-instructed understrapper omit those other parts of her cue which the principal judged necessary for the furtherance of his scheme.
I allege, I desire you will order him and this barber, who is his understrapper, to be examined on the spot.
I have no doubt that some understrapper from the Castle has had some communication with Mr Sprugeon.
He was a medical man, not long graduated, I imagine, and perhaps some sort of understrapper in the Association office.
Cornwallis had long since left Halifax, and Lawrence, the English governor, while loyal to a fault, was, like Braddock, that type of English understrapper who has wrought such irreparable injury to English prestige purely from lack of sympathetic insight with colonial conditions.
A deputy adjunct undersecretary in the Ministry of the Interior, whatever it sounds like, is no teadrinking understrapper but one of the most important keys to government.
Still he had persevered, and a set of understrappers around him, who would make nothing out of the election without his candidature, assured him from time to time that he would even as yet come out all right at the ballot.
Garman was in rags and his condition evidenced the keenest poverty, this sally was treated as a fine joke by the overseer and the understrappers, who roared with laughter, and swore that they had never heard anything better in their lives.
Nothing could be more scandalous, arrogant, and shamefully flagrant, than the conduct and deportment of those who acted the part of understrappers to the ministry on this occasion.
The understrappers are told to pressurize and a flood of protest reaches various officials of the Central Government.
Having a contempt for curates, whom he always called understrappers, he was resolved to be buried by a beneficed clergyman.
Berlin in June evidently went home with the milk, and there were open carriages carrying merry-makers up the Mauer Strasse to the Lin-den, sounds of gaiety and music came from the Prinz Carl Palace across the way, and beyond it I could see lights burning in the great ministries on the Wilhelmstrasse: understrappers of the Congress still hard at it while their betters waltzed and junketed - aye, and rogered away the diplomatic night, if Shuvalov was anything to go by.