For wide classes of locally convex spaces, in particular, for the space Cpfalse(Xfalse) of continuous real‐valued functions on a Tychonoff space X equipped with the pointwise topology, we characterize the existence of a fundamental bounded resolution (i.e., an increasing family of bounded sets indexed by the irrationals which swallows the bounded sets). These facts together with some results from Grothendieck's theory of (DF)‐spaces have led us to introduce quasi‐(DF)‐spaces, a class of locally convex spaces containing (DF)‐spaces that preserves subspaces, countable direct sums and countable products. Regular (LM)‐spaces as well as their strong duals are quasi‐(DF)‐spaces. Hence the space of distributions D′false(normalΩfalse) provides a concrete example of a quasi‐(DF)‐space not being a (DF)‐space. We show that Cpfalse(Xfalse) has a fundamental bounded resolution if and only if Cpfalse(Xfalse) is a quasi‐(DF)‐space if and only if the strong dual of Cpfalse(Xfalse) is a quasi‐(DF)‐space if and only if X is countable. If X is metrizable, then Ckfalse(Xfalse) is a quasi‐(DF)‐space if and only if X is a σ‐compact Polish space.