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 →

2) (finance) making less money than others. tree →

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 →
• (office) He was told he was underperforming and could lose his job. tree →
• (news) The shares are underperforming the market. tree →
• (sport) The team has been underperforming all season. tree →
• (teacher, kindly) You're underperforming in maths — let's find out why. tree →
• (chat) my plants are underperforming lol tree →

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.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «underperforming» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.