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What is "well-founded"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
well-founded
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
fear
▪ I was dealing with the definition of refugees under the 1951 convention, and concentrating on the well-founded fears of persecution.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But, the Bremen scientists discovered, the fears were well-founded.
▪ I can't feel anything substantial in him, anything well-founded about him.
▪ I was dealing with the definition of refugees under the 1951 convention, and concentrating on the well-founded fears of persecution.
▪ In fact, their campaign and the probably well-founded suspicion that the result had been rigged had the opposite effect.
▪ Such an assertion presupposes a well-founded theory of performance, one which was able to assign periods of time to mental processes.
▪ What is now beyond dispute is that the impressionistic evidence is well-founded.
▪ You're hot, tired, hungry very probably, and here I am, not answering any of your well-founded questions.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
well-founded

late 14c., from well (adv.) + past participle of found (v.1).

Wiktionary
well-founded

a. 1 based on reasoning, evidence and good judgement 2 properly substantiated 3 (context math English) Of a binary relation: such that every non-empty subset of the relation's domain has a minimal element with respect to the relation.

WordNet
well-founded

adj. based on sound reasoning or evidence; "a reasonable argument"; "well-founded suspicions" [syn: tenable]

Usage examples of "well-founded".

But there was still more scandal when it was learned that on the night of the murder, Mary Miles Minter, followed by Mabel Normand, had separate trysts with Taylor his reputation as a Lothario was apparently well-founded.

I had taken so lately such well-founded and philosophical resolutions, and I was not yet sufficiently at my ease to value the pain of being tempted.

But the last two decades of research by hundreds of dedicated physicists and mathematicians from numerous countries have given us well-founded hope that we are on the right and possibly final track.

What are the chances, however, in spite of our apparently well-founded faith, that some bristle-headed local chemist with a fighting chin will not spring up at an arsenic-poisoning trial and, with new facts about the substance, blow to pieces the cocksure evidence of the leading expert in pathology?

As the massive door clicked softly behind the elderly stenographer, the last of the procession, Bibbs had a feeling that they all understood that he was a failure as a great man's son, a disappointment, the "queer one" of the family, and that he had been summoned to judgment--a well-founded impression, for that was exactly what they understood.

Yet well-founded though it was, his affection would not run to discussing the merits of different kinds of copper-bottomed tin-bodied well-kettles for an equal length of time.

No wonder princes and chiefs around here were not quite so concerned about Saxon invasions, despite the well-founded rumors that Aelle and his sons intended to expand beyond their pale near Eburacum.

Her nightmare visions of what was to happen at the water oak had proved to be well-founded.