the.com/foundation
the unglamorous concrete nobody admires until the whole thing tilts sideways.
means The base on which something rests — literally the lowest load-bearing part of a building, or figuratively the underlying principle, structure, or support that everything else is built upon.
from From Latin 'fundatio,' from 'fundare' meaning 'to lay a base, to found,' which traces back to 'fundus' — the bottom, the ground, the very floor of a thing. (That same 'fundus' is a cousin of English 'bottom' and lurks inside 'fund' and 'profound.') It reached English through Old French 'fondation,' carrying its meaning all the way down to where it started: the bottom.
- goes deeper
- Burj Khalifa's piles sink 50 meters underground
- makeup origin
- Max Factor coined cosmetic foundation in 1930s Hollywood
- leaning proof
- Pisa's tower tilts from soft soil beneath
- math sense
- Foundations of mathematics underpin every proven theorem
- frost foe
- Footings must sit below the freeze line
ford foundation — founded 1936, $16 billion endowment, world's largest private foundation
rockefeller foundation — founded 1913, funded green revolution that increased global crop yields
aspen institute — founded 1950 as foundation, hosts 60,000+ leaders annually across locations