MEANING
1. Provide financial backing and undertake responsibility for costs or losses if an activity needs support.
2. Agree to provide insurance cover and pay under the policy’s terms when specified losses occur.
3. Agree to buy newly issued shares or securities that are not sold to other investors.
Use it for
identifying who bears a project’s financial risk; distinguishing a funding guarantee from verbal support; explaining how financial backing enables an activityDistinguishes financial risk-bearing commitments from general endorsement or ordinary sponsorship. Academic functions: Causation / Relationships, Research / Methodology.
Words that belong together
- underwrite a project
- underwrite the costs
- underwrite an initiative
On the page
The foundation agreed to underwrite the project’s initial costs while the researchers sought longer-term funding.
The economic analysis asks who ultimately underwrites the risk of the proposed investment.
The insurer declined to underwrite the risk under the proposed conditions.
The policy review distinguishes risks the firm will underwrite from losses excluded by the contract.
The bank agreed to underwrite the share issue, accepting the risk that some shares would remain unsold.
Nearby words
Word forms
- Base
- underwrite
- Past tense
- underwrote
- Past participle
- underwritten
- Present participle
- underwriting
Full tense & aspect guide
- Present
- underwrite
- Present continuous
- am/is/are underwriting
- Present perfect
- have/has underwritten
- Present perfect continuous
- have/has been underwriting
- Past
- underwrote
- Past continuous
- was/were underwriting
- Past perfect
- had underwritten
- Past perfect continuous
- had been underwriting
- Future
- will underwrite
- Future continuous
- will be underwriting
- Future perfect
- will have underwritten
- Future perfect continuous
- will have been underwriting
Choose the auxiliary that agrees with your subject. These are constructions of one word, not separate entries.
Usage notes
Transitive verb. Base underwrite; third-person underwrites; simple past underwrote; past participle underwritten; present participle underwriting. Register: formal. Commonness: uncommon (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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