fundamentals
- 1Plural of fundamental.
Mastering the fundamentals of grammar makes writing far easier.
The lecture covered the fundamentals of cell biology.
Note
An ordinary plural that covers every noun use of fundamental. Most often it means basic principles or skills, as in the fundamentals of grammar. In acoustics, a fundamental is the lowest frequency of a waveform or the lowest partial of a complex tone, so two different notes have two fundamentals. The adjective takes no -s. Contrast the investor's sense, which exists only as a plural.
- 2The basic financial and economic data (such as earnings, revenue, and debt) used to assess a company's underlying value.
Analysts pored over the bank's fundamentals before issuing a rating.
Despite the market panic, the retailer's fundamentals pointed to steady long-term growth.
Similarfinancials
Note
Finance uses it only in the plural, with a plural verb: a company's fundamentals are sound or poor, never a single fundamental. It belongs to fundamental analysis, which judges a business by its financial statements rather than by how its shares happen to be trading. Matthew Krantz's Fundamental Analysis For Dummies (2009) adds a caution: those statements look backward, so sound fundamentals describe past performance, not a forecast.
fundamentals is a form of fundamental
fundamental, noun: A basic truth, concept, principle, rule, or law that serves as a building block for more complex ideas. Full entry
- Forms
- fundamentalfundamentals plural
- Spelling
- fundamental → fundamentals: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Use it in a sentence
Write your own sentence with fundamentals, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.