bottom on

present singular third person bottoms on · participle present bottoming on · participle past bottomed on · past bottomed on

1. transitiveTo ground or base on.

   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.

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

   2 more examples

   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.

   1839, Henry Lee, Charles Carter Lee, Observations on the writings of Thomas Jefferson

   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.

   1993, William Safire, Mangled Metaphors