Word.ws English Dictionary

basic

Syllables: ba·sic/ˈbeɪsɪk/

basic adjective: necessary, essential for life or some process.

Adjective

basic (comparative more basic, superlative most basic)

  1. Necessary, essential for life or some process.
    • Flour is a basic ingredient of bread.
    • Over the past few weeks, U.S. Coast Guard service members, civilian employees and their families have had to scramble to pay for basic necessities. Many have taken donations of food and toiletries from their communities, and frantically called their banks and credit unions to try to avert financial...2019 January 24, Tara Law, “There’s a Food Pantry at the Coast Guard Academy. How the Shutdown Is Causing Special Pain for Service Members”, in Time
  2. Elementary, simple, fundamental, merely functional.
    • The Hotel Sparta’s accommodation is very basic.
  3. Of or pertaining to a base; having a pH greater than 7.
    Synonyms:
    alkaline
    Antonyms:
    acidic
  4. (informal) Unremarkable or uninteresting; boring; uncool.
    • I'm not saying people are jealous of Hathaway because she is so perfect. Yes, she does have it all — husband, healthy career, good looks. But she doesn't do anything in an "awesome" way. She's basic.2013, Sam Stryker, "Why Does Everyone Hate Anne Hathaway?", The Observer (University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary's College), Volume 46, Issue 101, 1 March 2013, page 11
    • And what can be said about Ginny? She’s basic. My guess is that she spends her time drinking pumpkin spice lattes and watching “Pretty Little Liars.” The Chosen One is way out of her quidditch league.2014 February 3, Trevor Thrall, “Firing Line: Rowling says ‘JK,’ Ron and Hermione not meant to be”, in The Daily Campus, volume 99, number 54, Southern Methodist University, page 4

Noun

basic (plural basics)

  1. A necessary commodity, a staple requirement.
    • Rice is a basic for many Asian villagers.
  2. An elementary building block, e.g. a fundamental piece of knowledge.
    • Arithmetic is a basic for the study of mathematics.
    • I know the basics of sailing and would love to learn more.
    Synonyms:
    grounding
  3. Basic training.
    • The drill sergeants gave him hell in basic.
    • When I shipped out for basic, the Orbital Defense Grid was all theory and politics.2004 November 9, Bungie, Halo 2, spoken by Avery Johnson (David Scully), Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox, level/area: The Armory

Proper noun (1) capitalized: BASIC

BASIC (plural BASICs)

  1. Any of a family of third-generation programming languages.
    • Many programs were written for the Sinclair Spectrum computer in BASIC.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: BASIC

BASIC

  1. (abbreviation, attributive, initialism) Initialism of Brazil, South Africa, India and China.

Proper noun (3) capitalized: BASIC

BASIC

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of British American Security Information Council.

Proper noun (4) capitalized: Basic

Basic

  1. A family of third-generation computer programming languages (c.1964 on).
    • Many programs were written for the Sinclair Spectrum computer in BASIC.

basic meaning in Bengali, Arabic and Persian

basic in Bengali

necessary, essential for life or some process
মৌলিক mōulik
elementary, simple, merely functional
মৌলিক mōulik

basic in Arabic

elementary, simple, merely functional
أَسَاسِيّ ʔasāsiyy

basic in Persian

elementary, simple, merely functional
اساسی asâsi, بنیادی bonyâdi

Examples of basic in a sentence

  • Coast Guard service members, civilian employees and their families have had to scramble to pay for basic necessities.2019 January 24, Tara Law, “There’s a Food Pantry at the Coast Guard Academy. How the Shutdown Is Causing Special Pain for Service...
  • Having access to the truth is a basic right of the general public.2020 September 21, “Breaking Through the Internet Blockade”, in Minghui:
  • "I think his lyrics are easy...he's basic.2015, Lily Kunda, "A New Track On Hip-Hipocrisy", The Marlin Chronicle (Virginia Wesleyan College), 26 February 2015, page 7
  • It [the online far right] feels full of righteous contempt for anything mainstream, conformist, basic.2017, Angela Nagle, chapter 7, in Kill All Normies, Zero Books, →ISBN:

All 40 example sentences with basic

Synonyms of basic

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of basic

Forms of basic

Adjective
comparativemore basic
superlativemost basic
Noun
pluralbasics
Proper noun
pluralBASICs
alternative formBasic
alternative formBASIC

Plural of basic: basics

Origin of basic

From base + -ic.

Acronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, but designed to spell out basic (i.e. simplistic). First use appears c. 1964 in the BASIC Instruction Manual.

An initialism of Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

Words formed from basic

Phrases with basic

17 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with basic

Questions about basic

What does basic mean?
Basic means necessary, essential for life or some process.
What is basic in Bengali?
Basic in Bengali is মৌলিক (mōulik). See Basic meaning in Bengali.
How do you use basic in a sentence?
Coast Guard service members, civilian employees and their families have had to scramble to pay for basic necessities.
What part of speech is basic?
Basic can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce basic?
Basic is pronounced /ˈbeɪsɪk/.

Words near basic in the dictionary

  1. basibiont
  2. basibionts
  3. basibranchial
  4. basibranchials
  5. basibregmatic
  6. basic
  7. basic B
  8. basic B's
  9. basic balance
  10. basic balances
  11. basic belief

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: basic (page history and authors); BASIC (page history and authors); Basic (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-basic.ogg, en-ca-BASIC.ogg.

Cite this entry: “basic.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/basic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.