Word.ws English Dictionary

baston

/ˈbæstən/

baston noun: a staff or cudgel. Also the obsolete form of baton.

Noun

baston (plural bastons)

  1. (obsolete) A staff or cudgel.
    • Thoſe Chriſtian Captiues, which you keepe as ſlaues, […]
      when they chance to reſt or breath a ſpace,
      Are puniſht with Baſtones so grieuouſly,
      That they lie panting on the Gallies ſide.c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC...
    • [fight] performed by bastons, clubs and coulstaves1601, C[aius] Plinius Secundus [i.e., Pliny the Elder], “(please specify |book=I to XXXVII)”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Historie of the World. Commonly Called, The Naturall Historie of C....
  2. (obsolete) An officer bearing a painted staff, who formerly was in attendance upon the king's court to take into custody persons committed by the court.
    • Item, whereas divers people, at the suit of the party commanded to the prison of the Fleet, by judgment given in courts of our Lord the King, be oftentimes suffered to go at large by the warden of the prison, sometime by mainprise or by bail, and sometimes without any mainprise with a baston of the...1377, Statute of the Realm 1, Richard II, cap. 12
    • When any person or persons shall yield his or their body or bodies to the hands of the sheriff or other officer, upon any of the said writs of capias, that then the same party or parties that shall so yield themselves, shall remain in prison and custody of the said sheriff or other officer, without...1562, Statute of the Realm 5, Elizabeth I, cap. 23

Proper noun capitalized: Baston

Baston (countable and uncountable, plural Bastons)

  1. A surname from Old French.
  2. A village and civil parish in South Kesteven district, Lincolnshire, England (OS grid ref TF1114).

Also used as

baston is also the obsolete form of baton.

Forms of baston

Noun
pluralbastons
Proper noun
pluralBastons

Origin of baston

From Middle English baston, from Old French baston. Doublet of baton.

From the French and English surname, from Old French bastun (“stick”).

Words that rhyme with baston

Questions about baston

What does baston mean?
Baston means a staff or cudgel.
What part of speech is baston?
Baston can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce baston?
Baston is pronounced /ˈbæstən/.
What is the plural of baston?
The plural of baston is bastons.

Words near baston in the dictionary

  1. bastnäsite
  2. bastnäsites
  3. basto
  4. bastocyst
  5. Bastogne
  6. baston
  7. bastonade
  8. bastonaded
  9. bastonades
  10. bastonading
  11. Bastone

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: baston (page history and authors); Baston (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-baston.wav.

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