well-founded
"well-founded" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“well-founded” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 12
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Based on reasoning, evidence and good judgement.
Corpus desk
Index EN-well-founded · well-founded · English
well-founded · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 12 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "W" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | well-founded |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “well-founded” in English
Rare enough to double-check
well-founded is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for well-founded in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is well-founded, spelled W-E-L-L---F-O-U-N-D-E-D.
Definition
- 1Based on reasoning, evidence and good judgement.
- 2Properly substantiated.
- 3Of a binary relation: such that every non-empty subset of the relation's domain has a minimal element with respect to the relation.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how well-founded appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
After the crisis had passed, certain well-founded proposals were revived, and resulted in important additions to the railway network of the country.
well-founded relation
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.