founder
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈfaʊn.dɚ/
ipa: /ˈfaʊn.də/
rhymes: -aʊndə(ɹ)
Forms: form: founders
form: foundering
form: foundered
form: foundered
Etymology: From Middle French fondrer (“send to the bottom”), from Latin fundus (“bottom”).
Senses: examples: text: We were not much more than a quarter of an hour out of our ship but we saw her sink, and then I understood for the first time what was meant by a ship foundering in the sea.
ref: 1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC:
text: This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog—in such tones he commenced reading the following hymn;(...)
ref: 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 9, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
text: Amongst the battleships, things are rather different. Barham led a valiant charge, but suffered for it; she will founder under tow in the Thames estuary shallows, eventually being refloated and refitted after the war.
ref: 2018 October 17, Drachinifel, 27:33 from the start, in Last Ride of the High Seas Fleet - Battle of Texel 1918, archived from the original on 04 Aug 2022:
glosses: To flood with water and sink.
raw_tags: of a ship
glosses: To fall; to stumble and go lame.
raw_tags: of horses
examples: text: All his tricks founder.
ref: 1613 (date written), William Shakespeare, [John Fletcher], “The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:
text: The other ambitions, and much of Prescott's plan, foundered just south of Hatfield that October, when a GNER express derailed on a shattered rail […], plunging the railway into a crisis that led to private track owner Railtrack being put into administration.
ref: 2024 September 4, Philip Haigh, “Can public-private partnerships be made to deliver?”, in RAIL, number 1017, page 52:
glosses: To fail; to miscarry.
examples: text: We found a strong Tide setting out of the Streights to the Northward, and like to founder our Ship.
ref: 1697, William Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World. […], London: […] James Knapton, […], →OCLC, page 82:
text: I was amazed when we came among the breakers (which to me seemed large enough to founder our ship), to see with what wondrous dexterity they carried us through them, and ran their canoes on the top of one of those rolling waves […]
ref: 1744, William Smith, A New Voyage to Guinea, page 167, quoted in The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds Of The Slave Trade, Robert Harms, 2008
text: 1932, Hart Crane, "From haunts of Proserpine" (Review of Green River: A Poem for Rafinesque, James Whaler
But still more disastrous was the storm which foundered his ship in Long Island Sound, swallowing within call of shore his fifty boxes of scientific equipment, his books, manuscripts and funds, the results of years of devoted labor.
topics: nautical
transport
glosses: To cause to flood and sink, as a ship.
glosses: To disable or lame (a horse) by causing internal inflammation and soreness in the feet or limbs.