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The measure or extant of one's capacity; depth, as of intellect; profundity; reach; penetration. [R.] Another of his fathom they have none To lead their business. Shak.

farm rent (Eng. Law), a perpetual rent reserved upon a conveyance in fee simple. -- Fee fund (Scot. Law), certain court dues out of which the clerks and other court officers are paid. -- Fee simple (Law), an absolute fee; a fee without conditions or limits. Buy the fee simple of my life for an hour and a quarter. Sh…

ennue; public money; sometimes, the income of an individual; often used in the plural for funds; available money; resources. All the finances or revenues of the imperial crown. Bacon.

Not funded; not fixed, invested, or determined; as, floating capital; a floating debt. Trade was at an end. Floating capital had been withdrawn in great masses from the island. Macaulay. Floating anchor (Naut.), a drag or sea anchor; drag sail. -- Floating battery (Mil.), a battery erected on rafts or the hulls of shi…

Fundamental principle; basis; plan; -- used only in the singular. Answer directly upon the foot of dry reason. Berkeley.

or legacy appropriated to support a charitable institution, and constituting a permanent fund; endowment. He was entered on the foundation of Westminster. Macaulay.

One who derives support from the funds or foundation of a college or school. [Eng.]

A female founder; a woman who founds or establishes, or who endows with a fund.

l; that is, expanding gradually from the bottom upward, as the corolla of some flowers; infundibuliform.

To attach (the fund or property sought to be secured by garnishment); to trustee.

The principal sound or sounds by which others are produced; the fundamental note or root of the common chord; -- called also generating tone.

An assemblage of species, having so many fundamental points of structure in common, that in the judgment of competent scientists, they may receive a common substantive name. A genus is not necessarily the lowest definable group of species, for it may often be divided into several subgenera. In proportion as its definit…

etc., thrown into the water to collect the fish, Wallon. -- Ground bass or base (Mus.), fundamental base; a fundamental base continually repeated to a varied melody. -- Ground beetle (Zoöl.), one of numerous species of carnivorous beetles of the family Carabidæ, living mostly in burrows or under stones, etc. -- Gro…

That which forms the foundation or support of anything; the basis; the essential or fundamental part; first principle. Dryden.

A vascular sac connected, beneath the brain, in many fishes, with the infundibulum.

hard stratum of earth lying beneath the soil; hence, figuratively, the firm, substantial, fundamental part or quality of anything; as, the hard pan of character, of a matter in dispute, etc. See Pan. -- Hard rubber. See under Rubber. -- Hard solder. See under Solder. -- Hard water, water, which contains lime or some…

n; lack of orthodox or sound belief; rejection of, or erroneous belief in regard to, some fundamental religious doctrine or truth; heterodoxy. Doubts 'mongst divines, and difference of texts, From whence arise diversity of sects, And hateful heresies by God abhor'd. Spenser. Deluded people! that do not consider that th…

logy (Biol.), the higher relation which a series of parts, or a single part, bears to the fundamental or general type on which the group is constituted. Owen. -- Serial homology (Biol.), representative or repetitive relation in the segments of the same organism, -- as in the lobster, where the parts follow each other…

Similarity of form; resemblance in external characters, while widely different in fundamental structure; resemblance in geometric ground form. See Homophyly, Promorphology.

That which has the same fundamental type of structure with something else; thus, the right arm is the homotype of the right leg; one arm is the homotype of the other, etc. Owen.