[UNDER-1 6 a, 10 b.]
1. A poor or inferior kind of wit.
1655. Shirley, Politician, Ded. Some abuses of the common theatres (which were not so happily purged from scurrility and under-wit—the only entertainment of vulgar capacities).
2. A person of defective understanding; a half-witted person.
Used as a surname in the Duke of Newcastle’s Country Captain (1649).
1682. T. Flatman, Heraclitus Ridens, No. 52 (1713), II. 75. Having often met with some of the Under-wits of that Panel, who threatened what their Foreman could have done.
1900. Everybody’s Mag., III. 513/2. He was a single man, and many said an underwit.
