Fundamentals

How to spell fundamentals

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce fundamentals

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fundamentals mean?

1. nounThe basic, essential principles or skills on which something is built.

Fundamentals in a sentence

• The training course covers the fundamentals of bookkeeping.

• A good coach drills the fundamentals before teaching advanced tactics.

Where does fundamentals come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin fundus, meaning the bottom, base, or foundation of something, which is also the source of words like 'foundation' and 'profound'. From fundus came the Late Latin fundamentum, meaning a foundation or groundwork, and the adjective fundamentalis, 'belonging to the base'. English borrowed 'fundamental' through Old French in the 1400s, originally describing the foundation of a building before it broadened to mean the essential underlying principles of any subject. The plural 'fundamentals' came to name the basic facts or skills on which a discipline rests, as in the fundamentals of accounting. The spelling keeps the steady run of unstressed vowels (funda-MEN-tals), and the schwa sounds in the middle are exactly where writers hesitate over which vowel to use.

How the word is built

• fund- (from fundus: bottom, base)
• -ment (result/state noun suffix)
• -al (adjective/noun suffix)
• -s (plural)