Picture a line drawn where something ought to have reached, and the thing stopping short of it. That gap is the whole word. The prefix under- puts it there, exactly as it does in undercooked and underpaid: the process happened, it simply did not go far enough. So the word never just means small or weak. It always points at a standard sitting somewhere in the sentence, and says this fell short of it.
可以想成有一條線，標著「本來應該到這裡」，而東西停在線的前面。那一段空白就是這個字的全部。前綴 under- 的作用就是把東西放在線的前面，跟 undercooked（沒煮熟）、underpaid（給太少）是同一招。所以它從來不只是「小」或「弱」。它一定在指句子裡某個標準，然後說「沒到」。
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