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bast.

Inner bark of a tree from which rope is traditionally made.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/bɑːst/Received-Pronunciation/bæst/General-American
  1. Inner bark of a tree from which rope is traditionally made.

    countable · uncountable
  2. Fibre made from the phloem of certain plants (particularly the lime tree) and used for making ropes, cords and matting.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

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.

noun/bɑːst/Received-Pronunciation/bæst/General-American
  1. Bastardy, illegitimacy of birth.

    obsolete · uncountable
Where this word comes from

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

adj/bɑːst/Received-Pronunciation/bæst/General-American
  1. Illegitimate, born out of wedlock.

    not-comparable · obsolete
Where this word comes from

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

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.