Foundement

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An obsolete word for the solid base or lowest structural layer on which a building or other construction rests
2. Archaic term for the groundwork or underlying base that supports a structure from beneath
3. A dated expression meaning the bottom layer or footing that a building or institution is set upon

Etymology: Its ancestor is the Latin "fundamentum", meaning a base or foundation, formed from "fundare", to lay a base, and "fundus", the bottom of something. The same root gives English "found" and "profound", a word for something that reaches far down. Through Old French "fondement", the word kept that literal sense of the base on which a building rests and was used figuratively for the groundwork of an argument or belief. Its close relative "fundament" took a stranger path and came to mean the buttocks, the part of the body that rests on a seat.