found
/faʊnd/verb
Establish or lay the basis of something
From Latin fund (bottom).
Lineage
The story
Before “found” meant establishing a college, city, or dynasty, it pictured something much more physical: putting a bottom beneath a structure. Latin fundāre came from fundus, “bottom” or “foundation,” a word connected to the ancient idea of the earth beneath your feet. That same root eventually produced fund, originally a foundation or basic stock, and profound—literally something “deeply bottomed.” English recorded found in the late 13th century, while the phrase “founding fathers” appeared much later, in 1916, for the creators of the American republic. Keep the image of a mason setting the first stone: to found something is to give it a bottom strong enough to stand on.
Modern usage
In informal slang, being “found” can mean being caught behaving unusually while continuing to own it confidently.
- Heard in
- internet slang
- See
- Urban Dictionary entry describing “found as fuck”
Words from the same roots
fund · Latin, ‘bottom, foundation, groundwork’
Derivedfund, foundation, founder, profound, fundamental, fundus