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founder

noun · verb

Simple meaning

A common ancestor of some population.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

fownder

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈfaʊndɚ

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. A person who founds or establishes some institution

  2. One who founds or establishes (a company, project, organisation, state, etc.).

  3. genetics

    A common ancestor of some population (especially one with a certain genetic mutation).

  4. One who casts metals in various forms; a caster.

  5. The iron worker in charge of the blast furnace and the smelting operation.

  6. usoften in the plural

    A Founding Father.

verb

  1. intransitiveof a ship

    To flood with water and sink.

  2. Stumble and nearly fall

  3. Fail utterly; collapse

  4. intransitive

    To fail; to miscarry.

  5. transitive

    To disable or lame (a horse) by causing internal inflammation and soreness in the feet or limbs.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A2 · Elementary (estimated)
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
General English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: A person who founds or establishes some institution

Used this way, founder is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use founder

  • “The new company's founder gave an inspiring speech to the employees.”

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

founder memberfounder effectreal foundergreat founderoriginal foundersecond foundertrue founderfirst founder

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • foundverbBase word

    Set up or found.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • foundationnounDerived noun · specialist

    The basis on which something is grounded.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • bell foundernounCompound term

    A person who casts metal bells.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: to flood with water and sink

breakflopInformalfall through

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.