foundation

Etymology

From Middle English foundacioun, fundacioun, from Old French fondacion, from Latin fundātiō (“founding, foundation”).

noun

1. The act of founding, fixing, establishing, or beginning to erect.
   The foundation of his institute has been wrought with difficulty.
2. That upon which anything is founded; that on which anything stands, and by which it is supported; the lowest and supporting layer of a superstructure; underbuilding.
   Aye Madam to be sure that is the Provoking circumstance—without Foundation—yes yes—there's the mortification indeed—for when a slanderous story is believed against one—there certainly is no comfort like the consciousness of having deserved it 1777, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal, IV.iii
   Since the launch early last year of […] two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations. University brands built in some cases over centuries have been forced to contemplate the possibility that information technology will rapidly make their existing business model obsolete. 2013-07-20, “The attack of the MOOCs”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845
3. (figurative) The result of the work to begin something; that which stabilizes and allows an enterprise or system to develop.
   The implication is that the Gandhian model of growth is possible, now that Nehru's investment strategy had already laid a strong foundation for economic growth. 2006, K P Yadav, Economic Planning And Restructuring, Sarup & Sons, page 44
4. (card games) In solitaire or patience games, one of the piles of cards that the player attempts to build, usually holding all cards of a suit in ascending order.
5. (architecture) The lowest and supporting part or member of a wall, including the base course and footing courses; in a frame house, the whole substructure of masonry.
   The foundations of this construction have been laid out.
   “Marge Gets A Job” opens with the foundation of the Simpson house tilting perilously to one side, making the family homestead look like the suburban equivalent of the Leaning Tower Of Pisa. May 20, 2012, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Marge Gets A Job” (season 4, episode 7; originally aired 11/05/1992)”, in The Onion AV Club
6. A donation or legacy appropriated to support a charitable institution, and constituting a permanent fund; endowment.
7. That which is founded, or established by endowment; an endowed institution or charity.
   The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is the parent organization of the Wiktionary collaborative project.
8. (cosmetics) Cosmetic cream roughly skin-colored, designed to make the face appear uniform in color and texture.
9. A basis for social bodies or intellectual disciplines.
   Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too.[…]But as a foundation for analysis it is highly subjective: it rests on difficult decisions about what counts as a territory, what counts as output and how to value it. Indeed, economists are still tweaking it. 2013-08-03, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847