3 ms·

No, "under-" means "below some baseline". If that baseline is objective (e.g. "the mean development of the most developed country") then "underdeveloped" is obj

• hotnfresh 3y ago
  It implies a problem that needs solving. Undernourished, underbaked, underachiever. I’m struggling to think of a word so-constructed that doesn’t imply a need for improvement, aside from ones that are purely positional (undercoat). Underbid, I guess, but that seems in a different category to me. It seems appropriate to me to describe a slum with poor roads and power as underdeveloped, but weird to describe wilderness as underdeveloped. The former brings to mind philanthropic NGOs, the latter, villains from popular pro-environmentalism fiction.
  • deadbeeves 3y ago
    Sure, but that doesn't make it a subjective adjective. It just tells you something about what the person who uses the word thinks about what the word is being applied to. It seems weird to me to refer to wilderness as "underdeveloped", but more because if it really is a wilderness then it should be undeveloped. If someone starts building things in it but few enough that the zone can be called "underdeveloped" then it's no longer the wilderness. In any case, what the original person said was that the country was underdeveloped. If there's not even a single road or rail between it and its neighbor, I'd say that's a fair assessment.