UNDEVELOPED

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does undeveloped mean? 

• UNDEVELOPED (adjective)
  The adjective UNDEVELOPED has 2 senses:

1. not developed, mature, or fully formulated

2. not developed, improved, exploited or used

  Familiarity information: UNDEVELOPED used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNDEVELOPED (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Not developed, mature, or fully formulated

Context example:

undeveloped social awareness

Similar:

budding (beginning to develop)

rudimentary; vestigial (not fully developed in mature animals)

Antonym:

developed (being changed over time so as to be e.g. stronger or more complete or more useful)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Not developed, improved, exploited or used

Synonyms:

undeveloped; unexploited

Context example:

taxes on undeveloped lots are low

Similar:

fallow (undeveloped but potentially useful)

untapped (not drawn upon or used)

 Context examples 

An undeveloped shoot from which embryonic leaves or flower parts arise.

(Bud, Food and Drug Administration)

Lord John's observations are frequently exceedingly fanciful, and he is capable of attributing the most absurd reasons to the respect which is always shown by the most undeveloped races to dignity and character.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The man is an undeveloped homicidal maniac.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Picture it to yourself: a man of ordinary stature, slender of build, and with weak, undeveloped muscles, who has lived a peaceful, placid life, and is unused to violence of any sort—what could such a man possibly do?

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting: as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings, when she chanced to be in good humour; and when, having brought her ironing-table to the nursery hearth, she allowed us to sit about it, and while she got up Mrs. Reed's lace frills, and crimped her nightcap borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads; or (as at a later period I discovered) from the pages of Pamela, and Henry, Earl of Moreland.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

They may be undeveloped types, said he, stroking his beard and looking round at them, but their deportment in the presence of their superiors might be a lesson to some of our more advanced Europeans.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

We traveled entirely by compass, and once or twice there were differences of opinion between Challenger and the two Indians, when, to quote the Professor's indignant words, the whole party agreed to trust the fallacious instincts of undeveloped savages rather than the highest product of modern European culture.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The unsatisfactory appearance of it is due to the fact, said he, that on descending the river the boat was upset and the case which contained the undeveloped films was broken, with disastrous results.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)