Meaning & use
under-resourced
Last updated
Meaning
adjectivecomparable
Not given enough money, staff, equipment or other support to do the job properly.
Grammar: Before a noun or after be: an under-resourced school; the clinic is under-resourced.
Patterns
- be under-resourced
- an under-resourced something
- under-resourced and overworked
The under-resourced library had no money for new books.
Teachers say their department is under-resourced and overstretched.
Many rural clinics remain under-resourced compared with city hospitals.
Common combinations
- under-resourced schools
- Under-resourced schools often struggle to hire specialist teachers.
- chronically under-resourced
- The clinic is chronically under-resourced.
- under-resourced and overworked
- Staff felt under-resourced and overworked.
- under-resourced communities
- The charity works in under-resourced communities.
- seriously under-resourced
- The team was seriously under-resourced for such a big project.
Synonyms and how they differ
- underfunded
- Underfunded points only to a lack of money, while under-resourced can include staff and equipment too.
- understaffed
- Understaffed is limited to too few workers, whereas under-resourced covers many kinds of shortage.
- deprived
- Deprived describes people or places lacking basic needs and is more emotional than under-resourced.
- stretched
- Stretched suggests having too much to do with what you have, but not necessarily a fixed shortage.
Opposites
Word family
- resource noun
- something useful such as money, staff or materials
- resource verb
- to supply with what is needed
- resourced adjective
- provided with enough resources
- resourceful adjective
- good at finding ways to solve problems
Commonly confused: under-resourced or resourceful?
under-resourced vs resourceful
Resourceful describes a clever person who solves problems, not a place that lacks funding.
Practice
The clinic is ___, so patients wait hours because there are too few nurses and little equipment.
Choose one answer.
Under-resourced means lacking money, staff and equipment, which explains the long waits. Over-resourced is the opposite and resourceful describes a clever person.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “under-resourced”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.