Dictionary

underhope en · NOUN

Etymology

Perhaps from Middle English underhopen (“to consider as secondary, discount”), equivalent to under- + hope.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) A lowered expectation or hope.
   • Yesterday they went with underhopes of home And mostly glad to go - how impotent to save […] 1973, James Gibson, Let the Poet Choose, page 55:
   • Of baffled struggling crowds and broken cries And the great stedfast underhope that never dies. 1896, Prosser Hall Frye, The Substance of His House, page 44:
   • He also has a greater hope, what he might have called a tremulous underhope: that the neighbours who say that 'he hears it not now' might be mistaken. 2005, The Thomas Hardy Journal, volumes 21-22, page 183:

Forms

Relateds

overhope