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baste.

To sew with long or loose stitches, as for temporary use, or in preparation for gathering the fabric.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/beɪst/
  1. To sew with long or loose stitches, as for temporary use, or in preparation for gathering the fabric.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

Late Middle English, from Old French bastir (“build, construct, sew up (a garment)”).

verb/beɪst/
  1. To sprinkle flour and salt and drip butter or fat on, as on meat in roasting.

    transitive
  2. To coat over something.

    broadly · transitive
  3. To mark (sheep, etc.) with tar.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English basten, of uncertain etymon, possibly from Old French basser (“moisten, soak”), from bacin (“basin”).

noun/beɪst/
  1. A basting; a sprinkling of drippings etc. in cooking.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English basten, of uncertain etymon, possibly from Old French basser (“moisten, soak”), from bacin (“basin”).

verb/beɪst/
  1. To beat with a stick; to cudgel.

    archaic · slang
Where this word comes from

From the surface, either an indigenous cognate or borrowed from North Germanic; compare: Old Norse bausta, Icelandic beysta, Norwegian Nynorsk bøysta, Swedish bösta, bysta, Danish bøste (“to smack, thresh”), to a Proto-Germanic *baustjaną. Compare derivatives Old Norse bǫstl (“arrow”), Swedish böstel (“racket, pestle”), böste (“crowbar”). Further compare fist, German Faust (“fist”), etc, and Latin fustis (“cudgel”). Might be related to French bâton (“stick”) (formerly baston); English baton comes from bâton; see also French bastonnade (“the act of beating with a stick”).

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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.