Foundational

How to spell foundational

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce foundational

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does foundational mean?

1. adjectiveForming a necessary base or starting point on which something else is built or developed.

Foundational in a sentence

• A clear budget is a foundational part of any successful project.

• The training course covers the foundational skills every new manager needs.

Where does foundational come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin verb fundare, meaning 'to lay a base' or 'to establish', which itself grew from fundus, the noun for the bottom or lowest part of something. From fundare came fundatio, the act of laying a base, and that passed through Old French as fundacion before settling into English as 'foundation' in the 1300s, first describing the solid masonry on which a building rests. The adjective 'foundational' is a much later English formation, built by adding the suffix -al to 'foundation' to mean 'serving as a base or starting point', and it became common in academic and professional writing only in the modern era. The same fundus root underlies a family of related words such as 'fund', 'fundamental', and 'profound' (literally 'toward the bottom'). The spelling trap sits in the middle: the unstressed -ation- carries a soft schwa, and writers sometimes drop a letter or muddle the -tional ending.

How the word is built

• found (from Latin fundus: bottom, base)
• -ation (noun-forming suffix)
• -al (adjective suffix)