Founder

How to spell founder

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce founder

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does founder mean?

1. nounA person who establishes or sets up an organisation, company, or institution.
2. verbTo fill with water and sink, or more generally to fail completely and collapse.

Founder in a sentence

• noun

  The company founder still owns most of the shares.

• verb

  The overloaded ferry began to founder in the heavy swell.

• noun

  As founder of the charity, she chaired every early meeting.

• verb

  The merger talks started to founder over disagreements about price.

Where does founder come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word has two distinct ancestries that happen to land on the same spelling. The 'establisher' noun comes from the verb 'to found', borrowed through Old French fonder from the Latin fundare, meaning 'to lay the foundation of', which itself rests on fundus 'the bottom, the base'; add the agent suffix -er and you get the person who lays the base of a company or institution. The unrelated verb meaning 'to sink or collapse' travelled a different road: it came from Old French fondrer 'to send to the bottom', also tied to fundus 'bottom', and originally described a horse that goes lame by sinking down, then a ship that fills and goes to the bottom. So both senses ultimately trace to the Latin idea of a 'bottom' or 'base', which is a neat memory hook. English had both forms in use by the 1300s and 1400s. Be careful not to confuse the verb with 'flounder', a separate word meaning to struggle clumsily.

How the word is built

• found (to establish, from Latin fundare 'to lay a base')
• -er (agent or verb-forming suffix)