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based

adjectiveverbadjectiveinterjectioncommon in dialogue

  • //beɪst//

Founded on; having a basis; often used in combining forms.

adjective

  1. 1

    Founded on; having a basis; often used in combining forms.

    That was a soundly based argument.

    The company opted for a subscription-based business model.

Etymology

From base + -ed.

verb

  1. 1

    simple past and past participle of base Being derived from (usually followed by on or upon).

    It's a new film based on a best-selling novel.

  2. 2

    simple past and past participle of base Having a base.

    The ladder is based on the even sidewalk for stability.

  3. 3

    simple past and past participle of base Having a base of operations.

    The company is based in New York.

adjective

  1. 1

    slangNot caring what others think about one's personality, style, or behavior; focused on maintaining individuality.

    Based means being yourself. Not being scared of what people think about you. Not being afraid to do what you wanna do. Being positive. […] Based is positive.

    You have to work as a human with empathy and love in your heart, staying positive and staying based and staying normal.

  2. 2

    Admirable; praiseworthy, especially if simultaneously unpopular or controversial.

    I hate l'Académie Française, but their spelling reforms are kind of based.

    I officially approve of North Korea. This is... this is incredibly based.

    OP is based as hell

  3. 3

    Admirable; praiseworthy, especially if simultaneously unpopular or controversial. Admirable for rejecting political correctness or socially progressive values.

    based and redpilled

    My last account got banned for being too based.

    Those who are against Trump are not based at all. On February 16th, The Donald users comment on a “based” post in r/DankMemes which uses a classic Squidward sleeping meme to criticize those who are upset by Chris Pratt going to “church” (one which was purportedly anti-LGBT) but “ok” with sex predators in Hollywood: […]

    His [Brenton Tarrant's] meme-themed shooting greatly represents the spirit of the aussie people, in the sense of shitposting until their last moment, based and redpilled he is.

Etymology

A reference to freebase cocaine, via basehead. Coined by American rapper from California Lil B in 2010 to describe his lifestyle.

interjection

  1. 1

    Indicating emphatic approval of a statement or opinion, often a controversial or unpopular one.

    —There is no ethics in communism—Based.

Forms

comparative
more based
superlative
most based
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).