undersing

present singular third person undersings · participle present undersinging · past undersang · participle past undersung

1. ambitransitiveTo sing inadequately, or with too little vocal effort.

   …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.

   1858, “The Ballad Poetry of Scotland—Professor Aytoun” (review) in MacPhail’s Edinburgh Ecclesiastical Journal, no. 152

   1 more example

   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.”

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

2. transitiveTo sing beneath, or in accompaniment to; to sing an undersong.

   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.

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

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   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.

   1851, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Prometheus Bound