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# underperforming

«underperforming» in Mova's school dictionary: **doing badly; not as good as expected or needed** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

adjective and verb (underperform, underperforms, underperformed, underperforming)

### meaning for a pupil

1) (jargon, euphemism) doing badly; not as good as expected or needed. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/U/underperforming/#m1)

2) (finance) making less money than others. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/U/underperforming/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

Managers, schools, inspectors and business news use it to describe failure in calm, technical words, avoiding «bad» or «failing». Common in official reports in all English-speaking countries.

### examples

- (school report) The inspectors named three underperforming schools. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/U/underperforming/#x1)
- (office) He was told he was underperforming and could lose his job. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/U/underperforming/#x2)
- (news) The shares are underperforming the market. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/U/underperforming/#x3)
- (sport) The team has been underperforming all season. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/U/underperforming/#x4)
- (teacher, kindly) You're underperforming in maths — let's find out why. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/U/underperforming/#x5)
- (chat) my plants are underperforming lol [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/U/underperforming/#x6)

### note

Trap: it sounds neutral, but it can be a warning before someone is fired. «Under» + «perform». Opposite: outperforming.

### In the corpora

- ["Underperforming" (jargon) means doing badly.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/17/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «underperforming» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/U/underperforming/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.