Fundament

[Dr. Goodword]

• fundament •

Pronunciation: fên-dê-mênt • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. The base of anything, the foundation, the part of a thing upon which it rests. 2. The lower part of the body upon which we sit; the buttocks, bum, buns, booty.

Notes: The adjective of this now rare word is one of the commonest in the English language: fundamental. In fact, we use it as a noun referring to the basics (again the adjective for base) for abstractions: the fundamentals.

In Play: The meaning of fundament isn't that far removed from foundation: "The fundament of his entire theory was that humans are basically good." However, the second meaning of foundation is the base of cosmetics; the second meaning of fundament is far, far removed from that sense: "Don't just sit there on your fundament. Get to work!"

Word History: In Middle English today's Good Word was foundement, taken whole from Old French fondement, from Latin fundamentum. The Latin word was the noun of fundare "to found". Latin inherited this word from the PIE root bhu(n)d- "bottom", with a Fickle N, that is sometimes there, sometimes not. Without it, we find Sanskrit budhnah "bottom," Greek pythmen "foundation", and English bottom, from Old English botm and Middle English botme. (Today our gratitude for suggesting this Good Word is owed Eric Berntson, a Lexiterian in our Agora who has a strong fundament in words.)

[Pattie]

Today's good word reminds me (because I've got that sort of a mind) of a discussion I heard on the radio recently about how much bovines contribute to carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere via their emissions of methane. The discussants went to some lengths not to be specific about how the methane gets out of the cows and into the atmosphere, eventually settling on saying politely, but not entirely accurately, that the cows belch it out. I wondered if I should call them up and offer them the word 'effluviate' as a solution to their dilemma. I didn't, so I'm offering it to my friends at alphaDictionary instead.

[call_copse]

This word is commonly used around here in the phrase 'he/she disappeared up his/her own fundament', meaning the person described has an elevated opinion of themselves. It's slightly politer than some alternatives I guess.

[Perry Lassiter]

Then in the religious field, there are fundamentalists, those who cling to the basics. In response to what they perceived as encroaching modernism, a group of conservative Protestants in the 1920's proposed five fundamentals to which one must adhere to be considered orthodox. Researching it for a paper long ago, I found there actually were 6 or 7 from which various writers picked five. I can remember the infallibility of the Bible, the Virgin Birth, the Second Coming of Christ as examples. The group tends to become legalistic and insist on their interpretation of scripture at many points.

In Islam, the fundamentalists don't seem to limit themselves to five points. I'm not sure whether their fundamentalists actually use the equivalent Arabic term. From the outside, they seem to insist on Sharia law as imposed by the state. It would be interesting to compare Shiite and Sunni concepts of Sharia, as they don't seem to disagree much on doctrine apart from their founders.

The term fundamentalist is also occasionally used in other areas, usually referring to a legalistic interpretation within their field of expertise. One example I've encountered is in psychoanalysis, oddly enough. An old article in the New Yorker was written by an insider, who had read some top secret late writings by Freud, which he said undermined orthodox psychoanalysis. He fell from fair-haired boy to pariah.

[Philip Hudson]

I was raised a Fundamentalist Baptist. I haven't changed but the meaning of the word fundamental in religious talk has changed a lot since it was coined many years at Princeton U. So now I am not a fundamentalist because I wouldn't want to be misunderstood. If one does not believe Schofield's Eschatology, one cannot be a fundamentalist. And I liked the word so well when it had the other meaning.