bottom

Webster's Dictionary (1913)

Origin: OE. botum, botme, AS. botm; akin to OS. bodom, D. bodem, OHG. podam, G. boden, Icel. botn, Sw. botten, Dan. bund (for budn), L. fundus (for fudnus), Gr. πυθμήν (for φυθμήν), Skr. budhna (for bhudhna), and Ir. bonn sole of the foot, W. bon stem, base. √257. Cf. 4th Found, Fund, noun

1. The lowest part of anything; the foot; as, the bottom of a tree or well; the bottom of a hill, a lane, or a page.

Or dive into the bottom of the deep.— William Shakespeare

2. The part of anything which is beneath the contents and supports them, as the part of a chair on which a person sits, the circular base or lower head of a cask or tub, or the plank floor of a ship's hold; the under surface.

Barrels with the bottom knocked out.— Thomas Babington Macaulay

No two chairs were alike; such high backs and low backs and leather bottoms and worsted bottoms.— Washington Irving

3. That upon which anything rests or is founded, in a literal or a figurative sense; foundation; groundwork.

4. The bed of a body of water, as of a river, lake, sea.

5. The fundament; the buttocks.

6. An abyss. obsolete John Dryden

7. Low land formed by alluvial deposits along a river; low-lying ground; a dale; a valley. “The bottoms and the high grounds.” Stoddard.

8. Nautical The part of a ship which is ordinarily under water; hence, the vessel itself; a ship.

My ventures are not in one bottom trusted.— William Shakespeare

Not to sell the teas, but to return them to London in the same bottoms in which they were shipped.— George Bancroft

Full bottom, a hull of such shape as permits carrying a large amount of merchandise.

9. Power of endurance; as, a horse of a good bottom.

10. Dregs or grounds; lees; sediment. Dr. Samuel Johnson

At bottom, At the bottom, at the foundation or basis; in reality. “He was at the bottom a good man.” J. F. Cooper. — To be at the bottom of, to be the cause or originator of; to be the source of. Usually in an opprobrious sense. Cardinal John Henry Newman

He was at the bottom of many excellent counsels.— Joseph Addison

— To go to the bottom, to sink; esp. to be wrecked. — To touch bottom, to reach the lowest point; to find something on which to rest.

Of or pertaining to the bottom; fundamental; lowest; under; as, bottom rock; the bottom board of a wagon box; bottom prices.

Bottom glade, a low glade or open place; a valley; a dale. John Milton

— Bottom grass, grass growing on bottom lands. — Bottom land. See 1st Bottom, noun, 7.

1. To found or build upon; to fix upon as a support; — followed by on or upon.

Action is supposed to be bottomed upon principle.— Francis Atterbury

Those false and deceiving grounds upon which many bottom their eternal state].— Robert South

2. To furnish with a bottom; as, to bottom a chair.

3. To reach or get to the bottom of. Samuel Smiles

1. To rest, as upon an ultimate support; to be based or grounded; — usually with on or upon.

Find on what foundation any proposition bottoms.— John Locke

2. To reach or impinge against the bottom, so as to impede free action, as when the point of a cog strikes the bottom of a space between two other cogs, or a piston the end of a cylinder.

Origin: OE. botme, perh. corrupt. for button. See Button.

A ball or skein of thread; a cocoon. obsolete

Silkworms finish their bottoms in... fifteen days.— John Mortimer

To wind round something, as in making a ball of thread. obsolete

As you unwind her love from him, Lest it should ravel and be good to none, You must provide to bottom it on me.— William Shakespeare

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), from GCIDE 0.54

Free On-line Dictionary of Computing

<theory> The least defined element in a given domain.

Often used to represent a non-terminating computation.

(In LaTeX, bottom is written as \perp, sometimes with the domain as a subscript).

(1997-01-07)