Word.ws English Dictionary

bast

/bɑːst/US/bæst/

bast noun: inner bark of a tree from which rope is traditionally made.

Noun (1)

bast (countable and uncountable, plural basts)

  1. Inner bark of a tree from which rope is traditionally made.
  2. Fibre made from the phloem of certain plants (particularly the lime tree) and used for making ropes, cords and matting.
    • [T]here would be seen his face, or that of his elder brother, peering down. A guttural sound, and the tip-tap of bast slippers beating the narrow wooden stairs, and he would stand before one without coat, a little bent, in leather apron, with sleeves turned back, blinking[…]1912, John Galsworthy, Quality
    • At the far end of the houses the head gardener stood waiting for his mistress, and he gave her strips of bass to tie up her nosegay. This she did slowly and laboriously, with knuckly old fingers that shook.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XIX, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

Noun (2)

bast (uncountable)

  1. (obsolete) Bastardy, illegitimacy of birth.

Adjective

bast (not comparable)

  1. (obsolete) Illegitimate, born out of wedlock.

Proper noun capitalized: Bast

Bast

  1. (Egyptian, alternative) Alternative spelling of Bastet.

Examples of bast in a sentence

  • I thought I saw Him in the Long Walk there, by the bed of Nelly Roche, tending a fallen flower with a wisp of bast.1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth, hardback edition, page 87
  • He had taken along a long bast rope in his sleigh, since it was the custom on longer journeys to have a spare rope in case the reins needed mending.1997, ‘Egil's Saga’, translated by Bernard Scudder, The Sagas of Icelanders, Penguin, published 2001, page 145:

Forms of bast

pluralbasts
alternative formbass

Plural of bast: basts

Origin of bast

From Middle English bast, from Old English bæst (“bast, inner bark of trees from which ropes were made”), from Proto-West Germanic *bast (compare the Swedish bast, Dutch bast, German Bast), perhaps an alteration of Proto-Indo-European *bʰask-, *bʰasḱ- (“bundle”) (compare English basket, Middle Irish basc (“necklace”), Latin fascis (“bundle”), Albanian bashkë (“tied, linked”)), though this is likely a substrate word and/or Wanderwort.

From Middle English bast, from a back-formation of Middle English bastard.

Words that rhyme with bast

4 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bast

What does bast mean?
Bast means inner bark of a tree from which rope is traditionally made.
How do you use bast in a sentence?
I thought I saw Him in the Long Walk there, by the bed of Nelly Roche, tending a fallen flower with a wisp of bast.
What part of speech is bast?
Bast can be a noun, an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce bast?
Bast is pronounced /bɑːst/ (UK).
What is the plural of bast?
The plural of bast is basts.

Words near bast in the dictionary

  1. bassplayers
  2. basswood
  3. basswoods
  4. basswork
  5. bassy
  6. bast
  7. basta
  8. bastable
  9. bastable cake
  10. bastable cakes
  11. bastables

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bast (page history and authors); Bast (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bast.wav.

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