undercount

[uhn-der-kount, uhn-der-kount]

verb (used with object)

1. to count less than the full number or amount of.

   The mayor claimed the census had undercounted the city's population.

noun

1. a count or total that is less than the actual number or amount.

Word History and Origins

Origin of undercount¹

First recorded in 1950–55; under- + count ¹

Example Sentences

That’s all but certain to be an undercount, and by a wide margin.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

“If there’s an undercount and that undercount correlates with need, you’d be systematically pushing resources away from need.”

Read more on Los Angeles Times

It noted that extrapolating the undercount in the three neighborhoods, which account for about 10% of the entire homeless population in a typical year, would indicate that up to 7,900 homeless people living in the city of Los Angeles may be missing in the 2025 count.

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"These incidents include only those that HRL corroborated through either remote sensing, open source documentation, or a combination of both methods and are likely an undercount," its report said.

Read more on BBC

The land of a thousand hills, Rwanda’s called—an egregious undercount.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal