found

• enPR: found, IPA^(key): /faʊnd/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʊnd

See find.

found

1. simple past and past participle of find

• (past participle): discovered; repertitious (by chance or upon advice, obs.)

found (uncountable)

1. Food and lodging; board.
   • 1872, James De Mille, The Cryptogram‎, HTML edition, The Gutenberg Project, published 2009:

     I'll only give you the usual payment—say five hundred dollars a year, and found." / "And—what?" / "Found—that is, board, you know, and clothing, of course, also.

   • 1985, Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, page 5:

     He moves north through small settlements and farms, working for day wages and found.

From Middle English founden, from Old French founder (Modern French: fonder), from Latin fundāre. Compare fund.

found (third-person singular simple present founds, present participle founding, simple past and past participle founded) (transitive)

1. To start (an institution or organization).
   • 1913, Robert Barr, chapter 4, in Lord Stranleigh Abroad‎:

     “ […] That woman is stark mad, Lord Stranleigh. Her own father recognised it when he bereft her of all power in the great business he founded. …”

2. To begin building. (Can we add an example for this sense?)
3. To use as a foundation; to base.
   • 1789 May 27, [John Moore], chapter XXII, in Zeluco. Various Views of Human Nature, Taken from Life and Manners, Foreign and Domestic., volume I, London: […] A[ndrew] Strahan; and T[homas] Cadell, […], →OCLC, page 203:

     Being left alone with him after they had dined, he obſerved, that however ſtrongly he was convinced of Zeluco’s being the writer of the letter, yet as he had had the precaution to diſguiſe his hand-writing, it would be fruitleſs to found any legal proſecution upon that circumſtance.

   • 1827, [Alexander] Dirom, Remarks on Free Trade, and on the State of the British Empire, Edinburgh: […] Cadell & Co., […], Edinburgh; and Longman, Rees, & Co., London, page 36:

     […] being now out of print, I shall use the freedom to give an extract from it, and in an Appendix to this Pamphlet (No. II.), republish one of the Tables that Author refers to, which will shew the facts he founded his reasoning upon, and the nature of the deductions which were the result of his researches.

   • 1867, In the House of Lords. Supplemental Case on Behalf of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, on His Claim to the Dignity of Lord Kinloss in the Peerage of Scotland., page 13:

     His Heir of Line in 1785 claimed the Dignity of Lord Spynie, founding the claim upon the Charter of 1590, but it being certain that a Dignity of the Peerage of Scotland could not, at least in the reign of James the Sixth, be granted by a Charter making no reference to a Seat in Parliament or the Dignity of a Lord of Parliament, Counsel abandoned the claim under the Charter and insisted that the other evidence sufficiently supported the claim of the Heir of Line.

• (to start organization): establish

• (antonym(s) of “to begin building”): ruin
• (antonym(s) of “to start organization”): dissolve, abolish

• foundation
• founder

• Oxford Online Dictionary, found
• WordNet 3.1: A Lexical Database for English, Princeton University

From Middle English founden, from Old French fondre, from Latin fundere. Cognate with Spanish fundir and hundir.

found (third-person singular simple present founds, present participle founding, simple past and past participle founded) (transitive)

1. To melt, especially of metal in an industrial setting.
2. To form by melting a metal and pouring it into a mould; to cast.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book VI”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:

     Whereof to found their engines.

• confound
• foundry
• foison
• fusion

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

found (plural founds)

1. A thin, single-cut file for comb-makers.

• fondu