founded

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of found.

   She founded the charity after retiring from medicine.

   The university was founded in the nineteenth century.

   Note

   The regular past of a verb with its own spelling trap: found is also the past of find, so founded belongs only to the verb of starting and building. It serves a charity founded in retirement, a claim founded on evidence, and the foundry sense of melting metal and casting it. Used after find, it becomes the childish, nonstandard past of find.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having a sound basis in fact, reason, or evidence.

   Like an argument that holds up because every step rests on something already proven.

   The criticism was founded on a careful study of the data.

   His optimism seemed founded, given the strong early results.

   Similargrounded, justified, warranted, based, valid

   Oppositeunfounded, baseless, groundless, unwarranted

   Note

   An adjective that often takes a qualifier in front: a well-founded hypothesis is one whose basis holds up. It can also be graded directly, as more founded and most founded, but the hyphenated compound is a natural way to say how solid the ground is. After a verb it usually takes on, which names the ground itself: a criticism founded on careful study.

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