Definition of "bedrock" []

• The solid rock that underlies loose material, such as soil, sand, clay, or gravel. (noun)
• The very basis; the foundation: Ownership of land is the bedrock of democracy. (noun)
• The lowest point: personal finances that were at bedrock. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Because of the recent financial meltdown and the newly straitened circumstances of many Americans, certain bedrock virtues — thrift, faith, community, hard work — are enjoying a renaissance, according to John Gerzema and Michael D 'Antonio in Spend Shift."
• "This is what would have to happen to bring down either tower, since the inner cores — the dense grid of 47 massive steel columns anchored in bedrock — were the primary vertical support for the towers."
• "The bedrock is an ancient, heavily eroded Cambrian metamorphic plateau dramatically punctuated by a chain of isolated flat-topped mountains."