unfounded

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Adjective

unfounded (not comparable)

1. Having no strong foundation; not based on solid reasons or facts.

   Synonyms: baseless, groundless, ungrounded

   an unfounded report; unfounded fears

   • 1663, Gideon Harvey, Archelogia Philosophica Nova, or, New Principles of Philosophy, London: Samuel Thomson, “To the Reader,”

     […] my chiefest design ever since the seventeenth year of my age […] consisted in elaborating such demonstrations in Natural Philosophy, as might serve to unfold the natures of Beings in relation to the Art of Physick, hitherto so uncertain, blind, and unfounded on Art […]

   • 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, London: J. Johnson, Chapter 11, p. 61, footnote,

     […] such unfounded conjectures are best answered by neglect.

   • 1814, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 18,

     The gloom of her first anticipations was proved to have been unfounded.

   • 1897, H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man, Chapter 4,

     “He give a name,” said Mrs. Hall—an assertion which was quite unfounded—“but I didn’t rightly hear it.”

   • 1989, Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day, Vintage International, 1990, “Day Three, Morning,” p. 137,

     […] the allegation that his lordship never allowed Jewish people to enter the house or any Jewish staff to be employed is utterly unfounded […]

2. Not having been founded or instituted.
   • 1980, Helen Louise Gardner, ‎John Carey, English Renaissance studies (page 268)

     Even the great world as yet undiscovered, the cities as yet unfounded, and the history as yet unwritten, are lost: fallen from the beginning.

3. (obsolete) Bottomless.
   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 2, lines 826-829,

     […] from them I go

     This uncouth errand sole, and one for all

     My self expose, with lonely steps to tread

     Th’ unfounded deep […]

   • 1685, William Clark, The Grand Tryal, or, Poetical Exercitations upon the Book of Job, Edinburgh, Part 3, Chapter 26, p. 210,

     He makes this Glob so spacious and fair

     Unfix’d, unprop’d, unfounded any where,

     Hang, like a Water-bubble in the Air.

Translations

• French: non fondé, dénué de fondement, infondé, sans fondement
• German: unbegründet, grundlos
• Portuguese: infundado
• Russian: беспо́чвенный
• Spanish: que no tiene ni pies ni cabeza

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