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''basin'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260723122144-00-⌔

basin - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

basin (plural basins)

  • A wide bowl for washing, sometimes affixed to a wall.
    • ✤ First, as you know, my house within the city
      Is richly furnished with plate and gold,
      Basins and ewers to lave her dainty hands;      1
    • ✤ After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded.2
    • ✤ What then, you will say, must a man sit with his chops and fingers up to the ears and knuckles in grease? No; let those who cannot eat without defiling themselves, step into another room, provided with basons and towels: but I think it would be better to institute schools, where youth may learn to eat their victuals, without daubing themselves, or giving offence to the eyes of one another.3
    • ✤ Everybody had washed before going to bed, apparently, and the bowls were ringed with a dark sediment which the hard, alkaline water had not dissolved. Shutting the door on this disorder, he turned back to the kitchen, took Mahailey’s tin basin, doused his face and head in cold water, and began to plaster down his wet hair.4
    • ✤ Synonym: sink
  • (obsolete) A shallow bowl used for a single serving of a drink or liquidy food.
    • ✤ […] Mr. John Knightley, ashamed of his ill-humour, was now all kindness and attention; and so particularly solicitous for the comfort of her father, as to seem—if not quite ready to join him in a basin of gruel—perfectly sensible of its being exceedingly wholesome […]5
    • ✤ They have a good basin of coffee or cocoa for breakfast […]6
    • ✤ He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity: ‘Please, sir, I want some more.’7
    • ✤ Gaspé Toujours is drinking a basin of tea, and Jeff Hyde is fitfully dozing by the fire.8
    • ✤ A steaming basin of coffee or soup revived them greatly, and even having to decide which of these refreshments they would have, and helping themselves to bread, pulled them together a little.9
  • A depression, natural or artificial, containing water.
    • ✤ This shortly brought them to a bewitching spring, whose basin was incrusted with a frostwork of glittering crystals […]10
    • ✤ The fountains were plashing musically into marble and alabaster basins.11
    • ✤ There was a stone basin of clear but motionless water, and the heavy reddish-and-yellow arches went round the courtyard with warrior-like fatality, their bases in dark shadow.12
  • (geography) An area of land from which water drains into a common outlet; drainage basin.
    • ✤ Devils Lake is where I began my career as a limnologist in 1964, studying the lake’s neotenic salamanders and chironomids, or midge flies. […] The Devils Lake Basin is an endorheic, or closed, basin covering about 9,800 square kilometers in northeastern North Dakota.13
  • (geography) A shallow depression in a rock formation, such as an area of down-folded rock that has accumulated a thick layer of sediments, or an area scooped out by water erosion.
  • An enclosed or sheltered area of water where boats are moored, often equipped with piers, wharves, or docks.
    • ✤ ‘Wondered if there was any chance of mooring my boat here. Basin ’s pretty crowded.’ ‘Nope.’14

Verb

basin (third-person singular simple present basins, present participlebasining or (rare) basinning, simple past and past participlebasined or (rare) basinned)

  • To create a concavity or depression in.
    • ✤ Then axial subsidence basined the surface of the dome.15
    • ✤ * Basining is the process that gives the faces of the dies their radius, or concavity. Depending on the production method, the planchet metal flows either toward or away from the center of the dies. The minting facilities “basined” the dies after they were delivered from the Philadelphia Mint’s Engraving Department.*16
    • ✤ Of course, this is exactly what did happen—the antiquated practice of basining the dies was cast aside for the Lincoln Cent.17
    • ✤ Scandinavia was basined under the load of the last or so-called Würm ice-cap.18
  • To serve as or become a basin.
    • ✤ To what degree this stress field formed in response to eastward movement of the African plate, to northward movement of the African plate relative to Europe, to basinning of the shelf between the eastern Canaries and Africa, or to other causes is as yet unknown.19
    • ✤ The eastward pinching and thinning were caused by the rapid basining of the plateau over the Pasco-Richland area in south-central Washington.20
    • ✤ Walls basined at a ca. 45° angle on the southwest side, but on the west and north there was little basining, with the floor sloping gently up to the original ground surface.21
    • ✤ Deformation of the rocks involved in anticline formation increased as deformation of the rocks involved in basining decreased, and the less intense structures of the norfold facies developed in both regions.22
  • To shelter or enclose in a basin.
    • ✤ A moan as of distant wind or thunder portended something at hand, the approach of which, basinned as we were among high broken ridges, patchy-scrubbed heights, and penned in by a maze of steep-sided gullies or gorges — we had no chance of observing, until it cam down in hurricane strength.23
    • ✤ A row of trees was basined in the latter part of April, and by the latter part of July, a little over three months, there was a remarkable improvement in the appearance of the basined row compared with the check trees.24
    • ✤ Caesar’s subjects bathed in Caesar’s blood basinned in the purple pool of Calpurnia’s dream; my sister slept in an ogre’s thought and woke up on the hook of a cannibal finger.25
    • ✤ They took a narrow path through the snow, up the hill which basined the village, and on to a plateau, a stretch of sparsely treed land.26
    • ✤ Well back under this natural shelter, basined in the hollowed rock, a blessed pool of fair water lay unwrinkled by even a flutter of breeze.27

Etymology

From Middle English basyn, from Old French bacin, from Vulgar Latin ﹡baccinum (“wide bowl”).

Pronunciation

  • (UK, US) enPR: bā’sən, IPA: /ˈbeɪsɪn/, /-ən/, [-n̩]
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -eɪsən
  • Homophone: besan

Printed 2026-07-23.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]: ↩

  2. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, John 13:5: ↩

  3. 1766, T[obias] Smollett, “Letter V”, in Travels through France and Italy. […], volume, London: […] R[oberts] Baldwin, […], →OCLC: ↩

  4. 1923, Willa Cather, One of Ours ‎, Book One, Chapter 1: ↩

  5. 1815 December (indicated as 1816), [Jane Austen], Emma: […], volume, London: […] [Charles Roworth and James Moyes] for John Murray, →OCLC: ↩

  6. 1826, George Wood, chapter 7, in The Subaltern Officer: A Narrative ‎, London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, page 109: ↩

  7. 1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], Oliver Twist; […], volume, London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC: ↩

  8. 1893, Gilbert Parker, “The March of the White Guard,” in Tavistock Tales, New York: Tait Sons & Co., p. 27, ↩

  9. 1915, Sarah Broom Macnaughtan, chapter 7, in A Woman’s Diary of the War ‎, New York: Dutton, published 1916, page 99: ↩

  10. 1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter 31, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC: ↩

  11. 1891, Frederic Farrar, chapter 6, in Darkness at Dawn ‎: ↩

  12. 1926, D. H. Lawrence, chapter 2, in The Plumed Serpent ‎: ↩

  13. 2012 January, Douglas Larson, “Runaway Devils Lake”, in American Scientist ‎, volume 100, number 1, archived from the original on 23 May 2012, page 46: ↩

  14. 1954, Ian Fleming, “Death of a Pelican”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957: ↩

  15. 1925 June, Reginald A. Daly, “The Geology of Ascension Island”, in Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, volume 60, number 1: ↩

  16. 2003, The Numismatist - Volume 116, Issues 7-12, page 21: ↩

  17. 2005, David W. Lange, The Complete Guide to Lincoln Cents, page 8: ↩

  18. 2013, Johannes Herman Frederik Umbgrove, Symphony of the Earth, page 47: ↩

  19. 1976, Günther Kunkel, Monographiae Biologicae - Volume 30, page 77: ↩

  20. 1992, John H. Bush, W. Patrick Seward, Geologic field guide to the Columbia River, page 9: ↩

  21. 2009, Richard K. Talbot, Lane D. Richens, Shifting Sands: The Archaeology of Sand Hollow, page 90: ↩

  22. 2012, E. Hansen, Strain Facies, page 133: ↩

  23. 1888, Henry Stuart Russell, The Genesis of Queensland: ↩

  24. 1920, Bulletin of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, page 16: ↩

  25. 1957, Quest - Volumes 13-19, page 28: ↩

  26. 2007, The Legal Studies Forum - Volume 31, page 1103: ↩

  27. 2012, Charles King, An Apache Princess: A Tale of the Indian Frontier, page 173: ↩

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