Fundamentally

How to spell fundamentally

13 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce fundamentally

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fundamentally mean?

1. adverbIn a way that affects or relates to the most basic and essential nature of something.

Fundamentally in a sentence

• The two proposals are fundamentally different in their approach to funding.

• Her argument was fundamentally flawed because it ignored the original contract.

Where does fundamentally come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin fundus, meaning 'bottom' or 'base', the same root that gives us 'foundation' and 'profound'. From fundus came fundamentum, literally 'a foundation' or the underlying support of a structure, and the adjective fundamentalis, meaning 'of the foundation' or 'essential'. English borrowed 'fundamental' through Old French and Latin in the fifteenth century to describe the deepest, most basic layer of something, whether a building, a belief, or an argument. The adverb 'fundamentally' was then formed in English by stacking the native -ly ending onto the adjective. The long chain of suffixes (fund + ament + al + ly) is exactly what trips writers up, since each unstressed syllable hides the doubled internal letters and the order in which they appear.

How the word is built

• fund- (from fundus: bottom, base)
• -ament (noun-forming suffix: a thing that supports)
• -al (adjective)
• -ly (adverb)