(v. t.) To excavate the earth beneath, or the part of, especially for the purpose of causing to fall or be overthrown; to form a mine under; to sap; as, to undermine a wall.
(v. t.) Fig.: To remove the foundation or support of by clandestine means; to ruin in an underhand way; as, to undermine reputation; to undermine the constitution of the state.
Example Sentences:
(1) Their efforts will include blocking the NSA from undermining encryption and barring other law enforcement agencies from collecting US data in bulk.
(2) And any Labour commitment on spending is fatally undermined by their deficit amnesia.” Davey widened the attack on the Tories, following a public row this week between Clegg and Theresa May over the “snooper’s charter”, by accusing his cabinet colleague Eric Pickles of coming close to abusing his powers by blocking new onshore developments against the wishes of some local councils.
(3) Chadwick felt that Customs and Trading Standards needed to continue their war on illegal tobacco – if not, efforts to tackle smoking could be undermined.
(4) But for decades now there has been a systematic undermining of it [the NHS’s] core values.
(5) The government also faced considerable international political pressure, with the United Nations' special rapporteur on torture, Juan Méndez, calling publicly on the government to "provide full redress to the victims, including fair and adequate compensation", and writing privately to David Cameron, along with two former special rapporteurs, to warn that the government's position was undermining its moral authority across the world.
(6) Like the doctor who makes a decision to operate without consulting the patient, I’m diminishing your autonomy by undermining it.
(7) There, the US Joint Commission, an independent, non-profit organisation that accredits healthcare organisations and programmes has issued a standard on “behaviours that undermine a culture of safety” to tackle “intimidating and disruptive behaviour at work”.
(8) Group B meningococcal vaccine consisting of the natural complex of specific polysaccharide and outer membrane protein (OMP) has been shown to be moderately reactogenic, safe with respect to the effect of undermining tolerance to human brain tissue antigens and to produce no allergization of humans.
(9) The end of the cold war and a reshaping of the threats faced by the UK had undermined the logic of nuclear deterrence strategy, he said.
(10) Then Greece has another chance.” But the intervention by the IMF will undermine EU leaders who argue Greece must submit to a fresh round of austerity measures to release funds for debt repayments.
(11) Entitled Jobs, Justice and Equity, the report warned that growing inequality, marginalisation and disenfranchisement are threatening Africa's prospects and undermining the foundations of its recent success.
(12) Umunna said: "Where you have pay awards that bear no relation to performance, but also can be beyond what a company can sustain, it really undermines trust in the whole system.
(13) The home team's defence had been undermined by naivety and it was in evidence when Stepanov, already on a yellow card for a foul on McGeady and having been played into trouble, lunged for the ball only to be beaten to it by Keane.
(14) The home secretary has been concerned that British involvement in the UN refugee programme would become an open-ended commitment that risked undermining the Tories' commitment to reduce net migration to the UK to tens of thousands by 2015.
(15) The Public Accounts committee (PAC) said on Thursday that the "chaos" surrounding the failure of G4S to provide enough staff for the Olympics had undermined confidence in Games organisers.
(16) Moreover, uncertainty about the resolution of these fiscal issues could itself undermine business and household confidence," said Bernanke.
(17) The clashes between the moralistic Levin and his friend Oblonsky, sometimes affectionate, sometimes angry, and Levin's linkage of modernity to Oblonsky's attitudes – that social mores are to be worked around and subordinated to pleasure, that families are base camps for off-base nooky – undermine one possible reading of Anna Karenina , in which Anna is a martyr in the struggle for the modern sexual freedoms that we take for granted, taken down by the hypocritical conservative elite to which she, her lover and her husband belong.
(18) James Cleverly, MP for Braintree, who supported Johnson’s aborted leadership bid before backing May, said joking about him risked undermining the foreign secretary.
(19) These effects of governmental restrictions on abortion do indeed interfere with the obstetrician's basic goal of providing optimal care for the patient and undermine their efforts to improve maternal and infant health.
(20) Poor crossing undermined Liverpool in the first leg, Klopp had claimed, but the flaw was remedied quickly in the return.
Underrate
Definition:
(v. t.) To rate too low; to rate below the value; to undervalue.
(n.) A price less than the value; as, to sell a thing at an underrate.
Example Sentences:
(1) Finally, a case of proliferative myositis regarded as semimalignant was underrated by CT.
(2) Also, all predictions erred in the direction of underrating the overall effectiveness of conjoint family therapy.
(3) The health risks of pregnancy, delivery, and labor "may be underrated."
(4) Admittedly Mourinho's side rallied after Yoan Gouffran headed Yohan Cabaye's ferociously whipped in free kick past Petr Cech but Newcastle's Mathieu Debuchy and Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa especially were defending brilliantly and Chelsea came undone on the counter-attack as a fine cross from the underrated Vurnon Anita prefaced Loïc Rémy's wonderful finish.
(5) We’d love a fit Santi Cazorla in exchange, but Gylfi Sigurdsson of Swansea always strikes me as an underrated player.
(6) Barcelona confirm Manchester United target Pedro has asked to leave club Read more The Super Cup is one of the more underrated fixtures in the football calendar but this result might change that.
(7) Although the extant literature yields few unequivocal findings, a number of clear trends can be identified: (i) health care providers and significant others tend, in general, to underestimate patients' quality of life; (ii) health care providers and significant others appear to evaluate patients' quality of life with a comparable degree of (in)accuracy; (iii) health care providers tend to underrate the pain intensity of their patients; (iv) proxy ratings appear to be more accurate when the information sought is concrete and observable; and (v) while significant others' ratings tend to be more accurate when they live in close proximity to the patient, they can also be biased by the caregiving function of the rater.
(8) The average duration of time spent in a standing position was considerably underrated by the workers, while the duration of sitting was strongly overrated when compared with the ratings obtained with the observational method.
(9) However, black Caribbean girls tended to be underrated in both reading and maths, while teachers were prone to underrate Pakistani girls in reading and overrate Bangladeshi boys in maths.
(10) "We are … concerned that the select committee has somewhat underrated the level of proactive work already undertaken by the PCC.
(11) He was a Christ-like hobo in Whistle Down The Wind (1961), a draughtsman forced into a shotgun marriage in A Kind Of Loving (1962), a prissy, poetry-reading Englishman in Zorba The Greek (1964), a Bathsheba-adoring shepherd in John Schlesinger's underrated Far From The Madding Crowd (1967).
(12) Ibrahimovic remains elite European football’s own dazzling kung-fu colossus, a player whose famously moreish highlights reel is backed by the hard yards of goals scored, 12 league titles won at six different clubs and an underrated appetite for the physical battle.
(13) Despite this, much of the medical profession continues to underrate the significance of cholesterol and lipoproteins.
(14) Unrealistic evaluations: individual consequences of BI may be underrated by relatives, more so if no additional injuries illustrate the patient's severe condition.
(15) Although most grading systems correlate well with each other, systems can vary dramatically in patient discrimination, interobserver variability, relative underrating and overrating, properties of nerve function selected, objectivity, and clinical definition.
(16) Krakow is one of the most underrated winter holiday destinations.
(17) Speculative fiction’s commitment to plausible, coherent world-building is often overlooked (or even attacked) by critics , and Le Guin would hardly be the first SF writer to feel irritated that the difficulty of her craft was underrated.
(18) There's local talent in the form of Cal, Christian Martin's underrated follow-up to Shank, which sees his gay hero returning to a contemporary Bristol stricken by economic hardship.
(19) The Trust’s statements seem to underrate its influence in the business and political landscape, and the effect that reinvestment will have on reducing the costs of renewable energy.
(20) One of the best, though underrated, things about the FiveThirtyEight site at the New York Times was its presentation of data through graphics, requiring a largely unheralded team of interactive designers to present the detailed information, plus people to ensure the automated feeds of new polling info was fed in.