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foundress

foundr·essUK /ˈfaʊndɹəs/noun

foundress is a noun meaning “A female founder (“one who founds or establishes”)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-O-U-N-D-R-E-S-S and has 2 syllables (foundr·ess), and it appears about once in every 21 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of foundress is foundresses.

What does foundress mean?

noun

  1. 1

    datedA female founder (“one who founds or establishes”).

  2. 2

    A female animal which establishes a colony.

  3. 3

    obsoleterareA female founder (“one who founds or casts metals”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce foundress?

  • UK /ˈfaʊndɹəs/
  • UK /-ɪs/
  • UK /faʊnˈdɹɛs/

Foundress has 2 syllables, split foundr·ess in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-foundress.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of foundress

  • foundresses plural
  • founderess

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is foundress?

Foundress appears about once in every 21 million words in written English, the 139,999th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).