undersubscribe

U1N1D2E1R1S1U1B3S1C3R1I1B3E1

verb

To subscribe to an extent that is far less than is available or desirable.

Scrabble 21

Meanings

verbundersubscribe (third-person singular simple present undersubscribes, present participle undersubscribing, simple past and past participle undersubscribed)

present singular third person undersubscribes · participle present undersubscribing · participle past undersubscribed · past undersubscribed

  1. To subscribe to an extent that is far less than is available or desirable.

    In all, our conceptual discussion suggests that firms may tend to undersubscribe to private industrial services, opening the way for government intervention.

    2015, Udo H. Staber, Norbert V. Schaefer, Basu Sharma, Business Networks: Prospects for Regional Development, →ISBN, page 74
    1 more example

    When only retail investors undersubscribe the offering, their demand is fully satisfied, but on average the IPO price is negatively revised (this revealing negative information collected on the market) and shares are not significantly underpriced.

    2013, Mario Levis, Silvio Vismara, Handbook of Research on IPOs, →ISBN, page 214
  2. computingTo have insufficient threads available in a multithreaded application so that all threads become blocked and performance suffers.

    This forces the agent to either oversubscribe itself by submitting jobs to multiple queues at once or undersubscribe itself by submitting jobs to potentially long queues.

    2003, Fran Berman, Geoffrey Fox, Tony Hey, Grid Computing: Making the Global Infrastructure a Reality, →ISBN, page 311
    1 more example

    First, the number of available hardware threads varies from platform to platform, so the ideal number of threads on one machine may undersubscribe or oversubscribe the threads on a different machine.

    2009, Kaushik Datta, Auto-tuning Stencil Codes for Cache-based Multicore Platforms
  3. computingTo employ more switch ports than necessary so that high-priority traffic is sure to be handled right away.

    In this way, MSPs can have the flexibility to oversubscribe lower-priority classes or even undersubscribe higher-priority traffic to meet tight QoS/SLA requirements.

    2004, Nam-Kee Tan, MPLS for Metropolitan Area Networks, →ISBN, page 384

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

undersubscribe. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/undersubscribe

MLA

“undersubscribe.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/undersubscribe. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “undersubscribe,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/undersubscribe.

Source: undersubscribe on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.