Dictionary

underperson en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (US) audio

Etymology

From under- + person.

Meanings

1. A person of low status.
   • Changing one's status as an underperson living in an underworld often sounds better than it is in fact since the transition is long and difficult. 2013, W.K. Bickel, R.J. DeGrandpre, Drug Policy and Human Nature, →ISBN:
   • It has always been easy to kill an underperson, a savage, a worthless person, a sinner who is not like us, ... 2001, Jerome Lofgren, Suquamish, →ISBN, page 172:
   • If you bargained for overlords and underpeople. Then you surely bargained for death instead of life. 1910, The Conservator - Volumes 21-22, page 51:
2. A member of a subhuman sentient species.
   • Life is no longer the long, easy ride the true men are accustomed to, and although life is not exactly fraught with peril, the true men learn of vulnerability and danger, things that the underpeople have long lived with. 2001, Karen L. Hellekson, The Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith, →ISBN, page 69:
   • These underpeople were even less human than the androids, their very appearance making obvious their animal origins. 2015, A. Bertram Chandler, The Inheritors, →ISBN:
   • The Administrator sent me here on a crazy errand, killing an unknown underperson. I find out that the person is really a little girl. Then I find out that she is not an underperson, but a frightening old dead woman, still walking around alive. 2012, Gardner Dozois, A Day in the Life, →ISBN:
   • For I felt sure these underpeople had taken it. 1895, Herbert George Wells, The Time Machine, page 118:

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