Low; of small height: applied to things.Hence In botany, of low or lowly growth: as, base broom; base rocket.Low in place, position, or degree.Of little value; coarse in quality; worthless, absolutely or comparatively: as, the base metals (so called in contrast with the noble or precious metals).Hence Fraudulently debased in value; spurious; false: as, base coin.Low in scale or rank; of humble origin, grade, or station; wanting dignity or estimation; mean; lowly: as, base menials.Suitable to or characteristic of a low condition; depressed; abject: as, base servility.Of mean spirit; morally low; without dignity of sentiment: said of persons.Showing or proceeding from a mean spirit: said of things.Of illegitimate birth; born out of wedlock.Deep; grave: applied to sounds: as, the base tones of a viol. See bass.In old English law, not held or holding by honorable tenure: as, a base estate, that is, an estate held by services not honorable nor in capite, or by villeinage. Such a tenure is called base or low, and the tenant a base tenant.Not classical or refined: as, “base Latin,”Synonyms Ignoble, vulgar, plebeian, mean, contemptible, despicable, abject, sordid, groveling, servile, slavish, menial, rascally, villainous.n. A plaited skirt, reaching from the waist to the knee, worn during the first half of the sixteenth century.n. A skirt of plate - armor, corrugated or ribbed vertically, as if in imitation of the preceding. See lamboys.n. The skirt of a woman's outer garment. The word was used throughout the seventeenth and part of the eighteenth century.n. An apron.n. The housing of a horse: used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.n. In music, same as bass.To let down; abase; lower.To lower in character, condition, or rank; degrade; debase.To reduce the value of by the admixture of meaner elements; debase.n. The bottom of anything, considered as its support, or the part of the thing itself, or a separate feature, on which the thing stands or rests: as, the base of a column; the base of a mountain.n. Hence A fundamental principle or groundwork; foundation; basis.n. In architecture, specifically— The lowest member of a wall, either projecting beyond the face of the portion of the wall above it, or differing otherwise from it in construction, and often resting on a plinth, with or without intervening moldings.n. The member on which the shaft rests in columns of nearly all styles.n. In zoology and botany, the extremity opposite to the apex; the point of attachment, or the part of an organ which is nearest its point of attachment: as, the base of a leaf; the base of a shell. The point of attachment of an anther, however, is sometimes at the apex.n. In zoology, also, that part or extremity of anything by which it is attached to another of higher value or significance.n. In chem., a compound substance which unites with an acid to form a salt.n. In pharmacy, the principal ingredient of any compound preparation.n. In crystallography, same as basal plane (which see, under basal).n. In petrography, the amorphous or isotropic portion of the ground-mass of a rock.n. In dentistry, the setting for artificial teeth.n. In dyeing, a substance that has an affinity for both the cloth and the coloring matter; a mordant.n. In fortification, the exterior side of the polygon, or that imaginary line which is drawn from the point or salient angle of one bastion to the point of the next.n. In geometry, the line or surface forming that part of a figure on which it is supposed to stand; the side opposite to the apex.n. In arithmetic and algebra, a number from the different powers of which all numbers are conceived as produced.n. It is 2.718281828459 +n. In heraldry, the lower part of the field, the charges in which are said to be in base.n. Milit.: A tract of country protected by fortifications, strong by natural advantages, or for any other reason comparatively secure, from which the operations of an army proceed, or from which supplies are obtained: called distinctively the base of operations or the base of supply.n. The rounded hinder portion of a gun, generally called the base of the breech.n. A small light cannon used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.n. In surveying, same as baseline.n. The place from which racers or tilters start; a starting-post.n. An old game, played in various ways, in some of which it is still practised, and in all of which there are certain spaces marked out, beyond or off which any player is liable to be touched with the hand or struck with a ball by a player on the enemy's side.n. One of the spaces marked off in the game of base or prisoners' base. See In base-ball, one of the four corners of the diamond. See base-ball.n. That part of an electromagnetic apparatus which contains the helix, switch, and first and secondary binding-posts.To form a foundation for.To use as a groundwork or foundation for; ground; found; establish: with on or upon: as, all sound paper currency must be based on coin or bullion; he bases his arguments upon false premises.n. Another form of bass and barse.n. In chem., this term is properly applied to the hydroxid of a distinctly electropositive metal or compound radical, which easily exchanges hydroxyl for an acid radical, producing a salt; but the same term is often applied in a looser and more general way to other substances of more or less electropositive character, although not containing hydroxyl, as, for example, to ammonia and compounds of analogous structure.n. In the gasteropod Mollusca, the flattened lower surface of the final whorl.
