Bedrock

How to spell bedrock

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bedrock

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bedrock mean?

1. nounThe fundamental principles or facts on which something is based.
2. nounThe solid rock lying beneath soil, gravel, and other loose surface material.

Bedrock in a sentence

• Honesty is the bedrock of any lasting partnership.

• The builders dug down until they reached solid bedrock.

• Trust forms the bedrock of the whole agreement.

• Engineers anchored the bridge supports into the bedrock.

Where does bedrock come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Bedrock is a transparent English compound, built from two very old everyday words: bed and rock. The first element, bed, comes from the Old English bedd, which meant a sleeping place but also more broadly a flat base or layer on which something rests, a sense that survives in 'flowerbed', 'riverbed', and 'oyster bed'. The second element, rock, entered Middle English from the Old French roque and rocque, themselves from a Late Latin word for a mass of stone. Quarrymen and geologists put the two together in the nineteenth century to name the solid, continuous rock that lies underneath looser soil and gravel, the layer everything else literally sits on. From that concrete geological meaning the word quickly took on a figurative sense, the firm foundation or basic principle on which something is built, which is how most adults use it today.

How the word is built

• bed (the solid base layer, from Old English bedd)
• rock (stone mass)