Dictionary.com
Thesaurus.com

National Science Foundation

American  

noun

U.S. Government.

  1. an independent agency of the executive branch, created in 1950, that promotes and supports research and education in the sciences. NSF

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

One of those will be the Vera Rubin Observatory, funded by the National Science Foundation and the Energy Department.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 23, 2026

Data collected by the National Science Foundation in 2017 showed Chinese nationals were the least likely among foreign science and technology Ph.D. graduates to leave the U.S.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 19, 2026

National Science Foundation, and incorporates data from multiple NOIRLab telescopes.

From Science Daily • Apr. 12, 2026

The National Science Foundation, one of the most important scientific grant-making agencies in the world, would lose $4.8 billion, or 55% of its funding.

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 7, 2026

The largest semi-steerable radio/radar observatory on the planet Earth is the Arecibo facility, which Cornell University operates for the National Science Foundation.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.