bast
/bæst/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 2.59 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Fibre made from the phloem of certain plants (particularly the lime tree) and used for making ropes, cords and matting.
Countable; Uncountable
name
Example Sentences
- "[T]here would be seen his face, or that of his elder brother, peering down. A guttural sound, and the tip-tap of bast slippers beating the narrow wooden stairs, and he would stand before one without coat, a little bent, in leather apron, with sleeves turned back, blinking[…]"
- "At the far end of the houses the head gardener stood waiting for his mistress, and he gave her strips of bass to tie up her nosegay. This she did slowly and laboriously, with knuckly old fingers that shook."
- "I thought I saw Him in the Long Walk there, by the bed of Nelly Roche, tending a fallen flower with a wisp of bast."
- "He had taken along a long bast rope in his sleigh, since it was the custom on longer journeys to have a spare rope in case the reins needed mending."
Etymology
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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /bæst/
- British English: /bɑːst/