framework

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A structure for supporting or enclosing something else, especially a skeletal support used as the basis for something being constructed.
• noun An external work platform; a scaffold.
• noun A fundamental structure, as for a written work.
• noun A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A structure or fabric for inclosing or supporting anything; a frame; a skeleton: as, the framework of a building; the bones are the framework of the body.
• noun Structure; constitution; adjusted arrangement; system.
• noun A kind of fancy work made with yarn of silk or worsted drawn across a frame in two directions, and knotted or otherwise secured at the intersections, producing reticulated patterns, sometimes of considerable elaboration.
• noun Spinning done on a throstleor ring-frame; also, knitting done on a stocking-frame.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The work of framing, or the completed work; the frame or constructional part of anything.
• noun Work done in, or by means of, a frame or loom.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun literally The arrangement of support beams that represent a building's general shape and size.
• noun figuratively The larger branches of a tree that determine its shape.
• noun figuratively, especially in, computing A basic conceptual structure.
• noun literally The identification and categorisation of processes or steps that constitute a complex task or mindset in order to render explicit the tacit and implicit.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a structure supporting or containing something
• noun a hypothetical description of a complex entity or process
• noun the underlying structure