foundry

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From French fonderie. By surface analysis, found (“to melt (metals)”) +‎ -ry (“place; process”).

Pronunciation

  • enPR: foun'drē, IPA(key): /ˈfaʊn.dɹi/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Rhymes: -aʊndɹi

Noun

foundry (countable and uncountable, plural foundries)

  1. A facility that melts metals in special furnaces and pours the molten metal into molds to make products. Foundries are usually specified according to the type of metal dealt with: iron foundry, brass foundry, etc.
    • 1944 November and December, A Former Pupil, “Some Memories of Crewe Works—II”, in Railway Magazine, page 343:
      So after learning a great deal about iron founding and much more about pike fishing, one regretfully took leave of a shop full of kindly characters and proceeded to a worse lot of odours in the brass foundry. […] So after a short spell in the brass foundry the wisest course was to follow with a similar period in the steel foundry, where much important work was done, including the manufacture of centres for wheels.
  2. The act, process, or art of casting metals; founding.
  3. A plant that produces chips out of semiconductors in the microelectronics industry.
    • 2023 March 21, Virginia Heffernan, “I Saw the Face of God in a Semiconductor Factory”, in Wired‎[1], San Francisco, Calif.: Condé Nast Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 29 September 2026:
      Chang gained trust by allaying fears that TSMC would steal designs, as pure-play foundries have no use of them; TSMC stealing from chip designers would be like a printing press stealing plots from novelists.

Synonyms

  • (semiconductor fabrication plant): fab

Derived terms

Translations

Further reading

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