Forms: 4 fynd(e)ling, 4–8 fondling, 4–6 -elyng, 4–6 found(e)lyng, (4 -eling), 4–5 fund(e)ling, -lyng, 4, 6 foundling. [ME. fundeling (= Du. vondeling, MHG. vundelinc), f. funden, pa. pple. of FIND v. + -LING; ME. had also findling (= Ger. findling), f. the pres. stem of the vb. Cf. also ME. funding.]
1. A deserted infant whose parents are unknown, a child whom there is no one to claim. Also transf.
a. 1300. E. E. Psalter, lxvii[i]. 5 (Horstm.). Of fadre of foundlinges ma.
c. 1305. Judas, 56, in E. E. P. (1862), 108. So þat þe quene vpbreid adai: þat he fyndling was.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 182/2. Fundelynge, as he þat ys fowndyn, and noman wote ho ys hys fadur, ne hys modyr.
1549. Coverdale, etc., Erasm. Par. Phil. iii. 5. I am an Israelite, not by engraffynge, but by kyndred: not a straunge foundlyng, but a Iewe, beynge borne of the Iewes.
1602. Withals, Dict., 271/1. A childe which is laid and found in the streete … or elsewhere, which they call commonly a foundling.
1735. Berkeley, Querist, § 372. Whether there should not be erected, in each province, an hospital for orphans and foundlings, at the expense of old bachelors?
1789. G. White, Selborne, xliv. 113. I myself have seen these foundlings in their nest displaying a strange ferocity of nature, so as scarcely to bear to be looked at, and snapping with their bills by way of menace.
1840. Dickens, Barn. Rudge, xxxix. He … roared again until the very foundlings near at hand were startled in their beds.
appositively.
a. 1712. King Ulysses & Tiresias, 25.
| Tho’ he a foundling bastard be, | |
| Convict of frequent perjury. |
a. 1853. Robertson, Serm., Ser. IV. xxiii. (1876), 250. This is the account given of the discovery of a foundling orphan.
1587. Golding, De Mornay, Pref. 8. As for lying or vntruth, it is a foundling, and not a thing bred, a meere corruption, and not a fruit of nature.
1827–38. Hare, Guesses (1867), 210–1. Employ such words as have the largest families, keeping clear of foundlings, and of those of which nobody can tell whence they come, unless he happens to be a scholar.
1853. Trench, Proverbs, 39. The great majority of proverbs are foundlings, the happier foundlings of a nation’s wit, which the collective nation has refused to let perish, has taken up and adopted for its own.
2. The Foundling: the Foundling Hospital, London.
1829. Gen. P. Thompson, Exerc. (1842), I. 123. It would be as wise to recommend wolves for nurses at the Foundling, on the credit of Romulus and Remus, as to substitute the exception for the general fact, and advise mankind to take to trusting to arbitrary power on the credit of these specimens.
3. attrib. and Comb., as foundling-hospital, † -house, an institution for the reception of foundlings; foundling-stone, an erratic boulder.
1756. Nugent, Gr. Tour, France, IV. 39. The enfants trouvés, or *foundling hospital.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), III. 166, The Republic, Introduction. If Plato’s ‘pen’ was as fatal as the Crêches of Paris, or the foundling hospital of Dublin, more than nine tenths of his children would have perished.
1750. Johnson, Rambler, No. 12, 28 April, ¶ 6. What, you never heard of the *foundling-house!
1892. Edin. Rev., April, 305. *‘Foundling-stones’ innumerable have become, in widely separated localities, objects of popular superstition and scientific curiosity.
