Quote:

underwhelmed is really just a neologism, no? (hi dale!)





yeah.. 50 years ago!

1956 T. K. QUINN Giant Corporations viii. 61 He wrote..commending the action of one of the giant corporations for a..price reduction at a time when prices were rising. I was underwhelmed, and investigated.

edit: from M-W Dict. of English Usage..
Our earliest record of it is from the New Yorker in 1944, when it was used by Howard Brubaker in the form of the participial adjective underwhelming. We first found it used as a transitive verb in 1949: And Dr. James B. Conant's recent effort to find a cause for hope... leaves me, in the words of Abner Dean, utterly underwhelmed. -Philip Wylie, letter to the Editor, Atlantic, April 1949

Last edited by tsuwm; 12/19/06 12:35 AM.