Everyday LifeGreek → English
Base
/beɪs/noun
The bottom part that something rests on, or a place from which an operation is run.
The Greek roots
βάσις
básis
a step; a pedestal
Literally: “a stepping, the thing stepped on”
Follow a root:βάσις3 words
The story of the word
Básis is the act of stepping and then the thing you step on, a foot or a pedestal, from baínein, to go. English holds two words here that only look like one: base the foundation is Greek, while base meaning low or contemptible is Late Latin bassus and unrelated, so the moral sense is coincidence. Chemistry's base, the counterpart of an acid, was named in the eighteenth century as the fixed part on which a salt is built. The same verb gives acrobat, one who walks high.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
basisacrobatdiabetes
In a sentence
The lamp has a heavy brass base, which is the only reason it survived the cat.