underdog.
A competitor thought unlikely to win.
Meaning & usage
A competitor thought unlikely to win.
They were the underdogs in the basketball competition.
Somebody at a disadvantage.
A high swing wherein the person pushing the swing runs beneath the swing while the person being pushed is at the forward limit of the arc.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₁én Proto-Indo-European *-tér Proto-Indo-European *h₁entér Proto-Indo-European *h₂én Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁-? Proto-Indo-European *-dʰi ? Proto-Indo-European *(H)n̥dʰí Proto-Indo-European *-ér Proto-Indo-European *(H)n̥dʰér Proto-Germanic *under Proto-West Germanic *undar Old English under- Middle English under- English under- Old English [Term?]? Proto-Germanic *-gô Proto-West Germanic *-gō Old English -ga Old English dogga Middle English dogge English dog English underdog From under- + dog.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.