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Foundation. [Obs.] Chaucer.

ence: Essential, as an element, principle, or law; important; original; elementary; as, a fundamental truth; a fundamental axiom. The fundamental reasons of this war. Shak. Some fundamental antithesis in nature. Whewell. Fundamental bass (Mus.), the root note of a chord; a bass formed of the roots or fundamental tones…

arily; originally; essentially; radically; at the foundation; in origin or constituents. "Fundamentally defective." Burke.

Applied to one of the cases of the noun in Latin and some other languages, -- the fundamental meaning of the case being removal, separation, or taking away.

The plan or fundamental structure on which a natural group of animals or plants or their systems of organs are assumed to have been constructed; as, the vertebrate archetype.

The buttocks, or hind part of an animal; the posteriors; the fundament; the bottom.

At bottom; fundamentally; essentially.

Fig.: The fundamental or essential part of a thing; the essential principle; a groundwork.

The ground work the first or fundamental principle; that which supports. The basis of public credit is good faith. A. Hamilton.

d to 10º in pure water. In both cases the graduation, based on the distance between these fundamental points, is continued along the stem as far as desired. Since all the degrees on a Baumé scale are thus equal in length, while those on a specific- gravity scale grow smaller as the density increases, there is no simple…

The fundament; the buttocks.

d to a system of medicine promulgated in the 18th century by John Brown, of Scotland, the fundamental doctrine of which was, that life is a state of excitation produced by the normal action of external agents upon the body, and that disease consists in excess or deficiency of excitation.

imperial constitution made by the emperor Charles IV. (1356), containing what became the fundamental law of the German empire; -- so called from its golden seal.

Of fundamental importance; preëminet; superior; chief; principal. The cardinal intersections of the zodiac. Sir T. Browne. Impudence is now a cardinal virtue. Drayton. But cardinal sins, and hollow hearts, I fear ye. Shak. Cardinal numbers, the numbers one, two, three, etc., in distinction from first, second, third, et…

The constitution, or fundamental law, of the French monarchy, as established on the restoration of Louis XVIII., in 1814.

of the owner of the property himself. -- Common chord (Mus.), a chord consisting of the fundamental tone, with its third and fifth. -- Common council, the representative (legislative) body, or the lower branch of the representative body, of a city or other munisipal corporation. -- Common crier, the crier of a town…

objects or facts in any branch or department, and which aim to study out and treat of the fundamental laws or systems of relation pervading them; as, comparative anatomy, comparative physiology, comparative philology.

or inclosed within narrow limits; a summary; an epitome. [Obs.] Though not a catalogue of fundamentals, yet . . . a comprehension of them. Chillingworth.

The fundamental, organic law or principles of government of men, embodied in written documents, or implied in the institutions and usages of the country or society; also, a written instrument embodying such organic law, and laying down fundamental rules and principles for the conduct of affairs. Our constitution had be…

In accordance with the constitution or fundamental law; legally; as, he was not constitutionally appointed. Nothing would indue them to acknowledge that [such] an assembly . . . was constitutionally a Parliament. Macaulay.