bottom on

English

Verb

bottom on (third-person singular simple present bottoms on, present participle bottoming on, simple past and past participle bottomed on)

1. (transitive) To ground or base on
   • 1839, Henry Lee, Charles Carter Lee, Observations on the writings of Thomas Jefferson:

     Unversed in financial projects and calculations and budgets, his approbation of them was bottomed on his confidence in the man. But Hamilton was not only a monarchist, but for a monarchy bottomed on corruption.

   • 1844, Edward Dorr Griffin, Sermons, Not Before Published, on Various Practical Subjects:

     Commutative justice relates to the exchange of one thing for another, and is bottomed on the principle of something for something, or as the lawyers say, quid pro quo.

   • 1993, William Safire, Mangled Metaphors:

     Karen Stimson, director of Largesse, a group that fights sizism, weighed in with this comment to The A.P.: "Being fat has always meant being downwardly mobile, especially for women. Society discriminates against people of size." The phrase is bottomed on people of color, an 18th-century term for "nonwhites" enjoying new popularity among those not pigmentally deprived.