How to Use underdeveloped in a Sentence

underdeveloped

adjective
  • The baby was born with underdeveloped lungs.
  • The time when one coach, citing the 16-year-old Salah’s underdeveloped body strength, moved him from left back to the front line.
    Grant Wahl, SI.com, 29 May 2018
  • His body was still underdeveloped, though, and the Colts took him in the sixth round last year to start as a kick returner.
    Nate Atkins, The Indianapolis Star, 5 Jan. 2022
  • A couple of states in the underdeveloped north account for much of it.
    Sameer Yasir, New York Times, 29 May 2023
  • The show does have flaws, though — The set-up takes a long time, and yet Dorothy’s companions still feel a shade underdeveloped, even for a Fringe show.
    Matthew J. Palm, OrlandoSentinel.com, 14 May 2018
  • This makes the vaccine easier to be shipped to underdeveloped parts of the world.
    Washington Post, 12 Jan. 2022
  • Since my references at the time were underdeveloped, his work stayed with me for a long time.
    Emiliano Granada, Variety, 16 June 2023
  • Jenik good size at six-foot-one but is underdeveloped at just 165 pounds.
    azcentral, 25 June 2018
  • With a very raw and still underdeveloped cadre of pitching prospects, the Reds figure to be at least two years away from contention—maybe more.
    SI.com, 22 May 2017
  • Holloway opened its doors in 1852, on a ten-acre plot in an underdeveloped part of North London.
    Anna Russell, The New Yorker, 28 Sep. 2021
  • But because Molokai is so underdeveloped (the town has no traffic lights), a visit here gives you a good look at how Hawaii used to be.
    Juliana Shallcross, Condé Nast Traveler, 6 Feb. 2023
  • Thus, the film plays out like a mashup of a couple underdeveloped ideas that never fully gel.
    Bill Goodykoontz, The Arizona Republic, 9 Nov. 2020
  • Since the discovery of oil in the North Sea in the late 1960s, Norway has gone from being one of the most underdeveloped countries in the region to one of the richest on the planet.
    Sloane Crosley, Travel + Leisure, 1 July 2023
  • Due to malnourishment, the girl’s teeth were underdeveloped and may have appeared small and out of place for her face.
    orlandosentinel.com, 12 Nov. 2021
  • The issue has been finding companies to take a chance at an underdeveloped part of the city that hasn’t had much success.
    Wells Dusenbury, sun-sentinel.com, 2 Oct. 2021
  • If your core is underdeveloped, your body will compensate and have the lower back take on the extra work.
    Women's Health, 11 Feb. 2023
  • His lungs were underdeveloped, and his fingers were as thin as strands of spaghetti.
    Yoko Ogawa, The New Yorker, 20 July 2023
  • The young Pirates fan was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome — which meant the left side of his heart had been underdeveloped at birth.
    Kimberlee Speakman, Peoplemag, 12 July 2023
  • Not much later, things got a lot worse when the Karma, a pretty yet overhyped and underdeveloped full-size plug-in-hybrid sedan, hit the wall.
    Georg Kacher, Car and Driver, 31 July 2023
  • The characters work well enough, though the plot is a little underdeveloped.
    Elizabeth Loga, Glamour, 27 Aug. 2021
  • Much to her credit, Conis does not end her book with some pat lesson or underdeveloped call to arms.
    Scott W. Stern, The New Republic, 31 May 2022
  • My profile revealed an underdeveloped upper jaw and a flat face to match my long, flat head.
    Ariel Henley, Wired, 6 Dec. 2021
  • Her lungs were underdeveloped, resulting in more stress on her lungs and heart.
    Dallas News, 4 Jan. 2020
  • That could be possible if the team finds a way to fund a new home on an underdeveloped, 62-acre site near the intersection of Roosevelt Road and Clark Street.
    Phil Rogers, Forbes, 21 Feb. 2024
  • At least two pumpkin-toadlet species have inner-ear structures so underdeveloped that the frogs are deaf to their own mating calls.
    Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 15 June 2022
  • Prey doesn’t reinvent the franchise as much as show how underdeveloped and under-utilized it’s been all these years.
    Borys Kit, The Hollywood Reporter, 31 Dec. 2022
  • Allowing a shaky and underdeveloped kid like this to be thrown to the wolves of professional sports is, at the very least, an act of parental malpractice.
    Los Angeles Times, 10 Apr. 2020
  • The street was an underdeveloped photograph, the colours leached.
    Hazlitt, 30 Aug. 2023
  • The underdeveloped relationship with his wife and his mother aren’t it.
    Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 22 Nov. 2024
  • There will be plenty of eyes on Serie A next season, a league that, according to James Horncastle, seems structurally underdeveloped and robust at the same time.
    Richard Amofa, The Athletic, 31 July 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'underdeveloped.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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