An eighth-grade history teacher from Denton, Texas, is teaching about colonial America, and wonders if there’s a difference between the phrases to found a colony or establish a colony. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Found vs. Establish”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hey, how’s it going?
Going well.
Who’s this and where are you?
This is Nate Wallace. I am in Denton, Texas. I’m an eighth grade U.S. History teacher.
Wonderful. Welcome to the show, Nate. How can we help you?
Yeah, so I was teaching my kids about the 13 colonies, and we were kind of systematically going through each colony and kind of the background of who started it and why. And as we were reading through the book, a kid, this is actually a question that a student of mine had, he raised his hand and said, why is it that sometimes when we’re talking about how a colony got started, it says this colony was founded? And then other times it says this colony was established. And I kind of looked at him with a blank look on my face and said, you know, I don’t know. I think that was a Friday. And the next morning I was listening to you guys’ show, and I thought, I need to call in and get an answer. It may just be a simple case of synonyms and just pick the one that they wanted, you know. But I really want to know if there’s something kind of deeper going on behind that word that might help me as I kind of teach the history of these colonies.
I think you said something about synonyms, and I think that’s a pretty good guess for some of these. It sounds like that they just chose establish and found as synonyms. If you look at usage, however, these two words, you sometimes do see a difference where if something is founded, it tends to be a more formal act, perhaps with a proclamation or a charter or a set of rules at the outset, that sort of thing. Whereas establishing something is often a series of acts that result in a founding or result in a creation of an organization or enterprise. But it’s not necessarily they don’t step on the dry land and go, I established this state or anything like that.
Okay. That would go along with it when we’re talking about the founding of Rhode Island and Connecticut. There’s all these documents that are going along with it, like you’re saying, like the fundamental orders of Connecticut or whatever that are really setting all this stuff up. But then, yeah, with the other stuff, it’s more kind of like a slow build, I guess is what you’re saying.
That’s right. And it’s not always that way, but generally. That seems to be a separating characteristics of the two.
Yeah, yeah. My sense of founding has to do with foundation, you know, just laying the bottom, literally.
Okay, interesting. Cool. Well, I will probably give this kid an answer that he asked to a question about four weeks ago, and he’ll probably forget that he asked the question four weeks ago and be really confused. But I appreciate the answer, so I can explain it better in the coming years.
Hey, it’s still a teachable moment, Nate.
Yeah, exactly. All right. Thanks for your call.
Yeah, no problem. Thank you guys. Take care.
Bye-bye.
All right, bye-bye.
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