undersing

English

Etymology

under- +‎ sing

Verb

undersing (third-person singular simple present undersings, present participle undersinging, simple past undersang, past participle undersung)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To sing inadequately, or with too little vocal effort.
   • 1858, “The Ballad Poetry of Scotland—Professor Aytoun” (review) in MacPhail’s Edinburgh Ecclesiastical Journal, no. 152:

     …the enthusiastic borderism of Scott, who, rather than that a freebooter should under-act his part, or a bard undersing his praise, took the liberty of sometimes inventing the action and then resounding its glories, and debiting both to the account of originals, quite innocent of either.

   • 2015 November 5, Jon Caramanica, “At C.M.A. Awards, Triumph for Chris Stapleton and Country Music’s Fringes”, in New York Times‎^[1]:

     But the night’s true indictment of country’s man problem was the dullness of the performances by male stars exponentially more famous than Mr. Stapleton: Zac Brown, undersinging on “Beautiful Drug”; Kenny Chesney’s lethargic turn on “Save It for a Rainy Day”; Blake Shelton mugging for the cameras on “Gonna,” Dierks Bentley needlessly stoic on “Riser.”

2. (transitive) To sing beneath, or in accompaniment to; to sing an undersong.
   • 1851, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Prometheus Bound:

     Alas me! what a murmur and motion I hear,
     As of birds flying near!
     And the air undersings
     The soft stroke of their wings—
     And all life that approaches, I wait for in fear.

   • 1990, John Hollander, Melodious Guile: Fictive Pattern in Poetic Language, pages 158, 161:

     Other post-Spenserian undersongs resonate with some of these implications… But even here, the stream of time is clearly the source of the Spenserian undersinging.

Anagrams

• endurings, sundering, undersign