foundation

noun foundations

1. countable, uncountable The act of founding, fixing, establishing, or beginning to erect. The foundation of his institute has been wrought with difficulty.
2. countable, uncountable That upon which anything is founded; that on which anything stands, and by which it is supported; the lowest and supporting layer of a superstructure; underbuilding. Aye Madam to be sure that is the Provoking circumstance—without Foundation—yes yes—there's the mortification indeed—for when a slanderous story is believed against one—there certainly is no comfort like the consciousness of having deserved it——
3. countable, figuratively, uncountable The result of the work to begin something; that which stabilizes and allows an enterprise or system to develop. The implication is that the Gandhian model of growth is possible, now that Nehru's investment strategy had already laid a strong foundation for economic growth.
4. countable, uncountable In solitaire or patience games, one of the piles of cards that the player attempts to build, usually holding all cards of a suit in ascending order.
5. countable, uncountable The lowest and supporting part or member of a wall, including the base course and footing courses; in a frame house, the whole substructure of masonry. The foundations of this construction have been laid out.
6. countable, uncountable A donation or legacy appropriated to support a charitable institution, and constituting a permanent fund; endowment.
7. countable, uncountable That which is founded, or established by endowment; an endowed institution or charity. The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is the parent organization of the Wiktionary collaborative project.
8. countable, uncountable Cosmetic cream roughly skin-colored, designed to make the face appear uniform in color and texture.
9. countable, uncountable A basis for social bodies or intellectual disciplines. Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too.[…]But as a foundation for analysis it is highly subjective: it rests on difficult decisions about what counts