founders

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of founder.

   The two founders disagreed sharply over the firm's direction.

   A portrait of the museum's founders hangs in the main hall.

   Note

   One spelling covers several kinds of people. Founders establish companies, projects and states. They can also be metal casters, and in genetics a population's founders are its common ancestors. In American usage the founders, usually in the plural, can mean the Founding Fathers. Keep it apart from the verb meaning "sinks", which is spelled identically: the founders meet, but the ship founders.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of founder.

   Any rescue plan founders if the bank refuses to extend the loan.

   Every negotiation founders the moment the two sides discuss money.

   Note

   Usually intransitive: a ship founders, a plan founders, a horse founders and goes lame. The transitive pattern, in which a storm founders a ship, is archaic. Horses keep a transitive use that is not marked archaic, where something founders an animal by inflaming its feet or limbs. In ordinary prose, write the ship founders, not the storm founders the ship.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2