unfounded meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

unfounded

adj

Etymology From un- + founded.

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

an unfounded report; unfounded fears
[…] 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 […]1663, Gideon Harvey, “To the Reader”, in Archelogia Philosophica Nova, or, New Principles of Philosophy, London: Samuel Thomson:

4 more examples

[…] such unfounded conjectures are best answered by neglect.1798, Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, London: J. Johnson, Chapter 11, p. 61, footnote:
The gloom of her first anticipations was proved to have been unfounded.1814 May 9, [Jane Austen], chapter XVIII, in Mansfield Park: […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC:
“He give a name,” said Mrs. Hall—an assertion which was quite unfounded—“but I didn’t rightly hear it.”1897, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter 4, in The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, →OCLC:
[…] the allegation that his lordship never allowed Jewish people to enter the house or any Jewish staff to be employed is utterly unfounded […]1989, Kazuo Ishiguro, “Day Three, Morning”, in The Remains of the Day, Vintage International, published 1990, page 137:

Not having been founded or instituted.

Even the great world as yet undiscovered, the cities as yet unfounded, and the history as yet unwritten, are lost: fallen from the beginning.1980, Helen Louise Gardner, John Carey, English Renaissance studies, page 268:

Obsolete Bottomless.

[…] from them I go This uncouth errand sole, and one for all My self expose, with lonely steps to tread Th’ unfounded deep […]1667, John Milton, “Book II”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 826-829:
He makes this Glob so spacious and fair Unfix’d, unprop’d, unfounded any where, Hang, like a Water-bubble in the Air.1685, William Clark, The Grand Tryal, or, Poetical Exercitations upon the Book of Job, Edinburgh, Part 3, Chapter 26, p. 210: