Number & MeasureGreek → English
Basis
/ˈbeɪsɪs/noun
The underlying support or starting point on which something rests.
The Greek roots
βάσις
básis
a stepping, pedestal
Literally: “a step, a standing place”
Follow a root:βάσις3 words
The story of the word
βάσις is a noun of walking, from βαίνειν, to step, and it first meant the act of stepping or the thing you step on. Greek used it for a pedestal, the foot of a column and the sole of the foot itself. That same verb stands under acrobat, one who walks on tiptoe, and under diabetes, which Aretaeus named for the way fluid seemed to pass straight through the body as through a siphon.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1550s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
baseacrobatdiabetesbasement
In a sentence
Every vector in the space can be written from that basis in exactly one way.
There is no basis for the claim in anything the report actually says.