underburden

English

Etymology

Pronunciation

Audio (US): (file)

Verb

underburden (third-person singular simple present underburdens, present participle underburdening, simple past and past participle underburdened)

To give too light a burden; to assign less than a fair share.
- 2007, Kimberley Coles, Democratic Designs, →ISBN:
  In reality, the levels of work varied: some internationals seemed overburdened with tasks and responsibility, some seemed underburdened, and some faced apparently just the right amount of work.
- 2009, Tetsuya Ishikawa, How I Caused the Credit Crunch, →ISBN:
  Well aware of the orgy of scapegoating that the world had embarked upon, I didn't want to blame anyone, let alone run the risk of overburdening some and underburdening others with responsibility for the crunch.
- 2011, Javier De Cendra de Larragán, Distributional Choices in EU Climate Change Law and Policy, →ISBN:
  Moving to the climate change context, as long as there is not a comprehensive climate policy in place, respect for the principles of polluter pays and proportionality will require a mechanism to determine the level of pollution created by each polluter, so as to avoid that some polluters are overburdened while others are underburdened.
To assign less work than someone or something is capable of.
- 1826, David Dalrymple, Mungo Ponton Brown, Decisions of the Lords of Council and Session: From 1766 to 1791:
  If a man is overburdened, which is the true cause of complaint, or underburdened, which is the modern cause of complaint, he may seek redress; but he alone who is overburdened or underburdened is authorised to seek redress.
- 1909, American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Society of Mining Engineers of AIME., American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, Transactions - Volume 39, page 716:
  After five days of unsatisfactory work, we came to the conclusion that the furnace was underburdened.
- 1916, Blast Furnace and Steel Plant - Volume 4, page 350:
  You can tell when a furnace is underburdened by the continued tendency to make hotter iron than that desired, also by the continued use of cold air necessitating low stove heat.
- 1990, Philip C. Grant, The Effort-net Return Model of Employee Motivation:
  Workers who are underburdened may experience stress because they feel their contributions to the company are not significant or that their talents are not being used.
- 1994, Petra Belzner, Siemens, & Jan Dommisse, Switching, protection and distribution in low-voltage networks, →ISBN:
  Measuring instruments which are connected to underburdened current transformers are adequately protected during normal operation, although this may not be the case in the event of a short-circuit.

Noun

underburden (countable and uncountable, plural underburdens)

(geology) The rock and subsoil that lies below a mineral deposit such as a coal seam.
- 1991, Roger M. Butler, Thermal recovery of oil and bitumen, page 122:
  Much of the heat introduced with the steam is lost to the overburden and to the underburden by thermal conduction in the manner discussed earlier.
- 2007, Erik Eberhardt, Doug Stead, Tom Morrison, Rock Mechanics: Meeting Society's Challenges and Demands, →ISBN:
  Settari (2002) and Osorio et al. (1999) also suggest that the analysis domain should include overburdens, sideburdens and underburdens for better accommodation of the coupling effects of stress changes and flow.
- 2014, Fusao Oka, Akira Murakami, Ryosuke Uzuoka, Computer Methods and Recent Advances in Geomechanics, →ISBN:
  For the material parameters, caprock and underburden are considered as identical, and behave like clay.

Anagrams

underburned