basin

Pluralbasins

Formsbasins, basining, basined

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A broad bowl that holds water for washing, sometimes mounted on a wall.

   She ran warm water into the basin and scrubbed the paint off her fingers.

   The old farmhouse kept an enamel basin and a pitcher on a stand by the back door.

   Similarsink

   Note

   The washing bowl stays closest to the word's origin: Middle English basyn, from Old French bacin, from a Latin word for a wide bowl. Shakespeare pairs basins with ewers, the jugs that filled them, and the King James Bible of 1611 spells it bason. Once a basin is fixed to a wall, it does the work of a sink, and there the two words overlap.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A hollow, either natural or made by people, that holds water.

   Water from the fountain spilled over into a wide marble basin.

   At dusk the deer came down to drink from the rocky basins below the falls.

   Similarpool

3. 3
   nouncountable

   An area of land from which water drains into one common outlet, also called a drainage basin.

   Rain that falls anywhere in the basin eventually reaches the same river.

   Farms across the basin draw on a single river, so a dry year hurts everyone at once.

   Similarwatershed, catchment

   Note

   Geographers define this basin by where its water goes, not by its shape. Many basins drain to the sea, but a closed, or endorheic, basin has no exit, and its water gathers in a lake. In place names the word is capitalized, as in the Devils Lake Basin, and drainage basin is the unambiguous full term when the other meanings could intrude.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A shallow depression in a rock formation, such as a down-folded area that has filled with a thick layer of sediment, or a hollow carved out by water erosion.

   Coal seams lie buried deep in the basin, beneath thick layers of younger sediment.

   Swirling floodwater carved a smooth basin into the granite streambed.

   Similarhollow, depression

   Note

   A geologist's basin need not be a hollow at all. Where rock has been bent downward and filled with thick sediment, the layers dip toward the middle, the reverse of a dome, and the basin may lie buried with nothing showing at the surface. The other kind is plainly a hollow, scooped out by water, like a smooth bowl worn into a streambed.

5. 5
   verbtransitive

   To form a concave hollow or depression in something.

   Over thousands of years, the weight of the ice sheet basined the crust beneath it.

   Mint workers used to basin each die so that the coin's face would have a gentle curve.

   Similarhollow

   Note

   The verb lives in two specialist corners: geologists write that subsidence or an ice cap basined the crust, and coin collectors speak of basining the dies, the step that gave their faces a slight concavity before it was abandoned for the Lincoln cent. The usual forms keep a single n, basined and basining; basinned turns up but is rare.

6. 6
   verbintransitive

   To act as a basin, or to take on the form of one.

   Where the crust stretched and thinned, the shelf began to basin, and sediment piled up in the low ground.

   Gradual basining of the valley floor left a shallow lake behind the ridge.

   Note

   Unlike the verb of shaping a hollow, this one takes no object: the land itself sinks or slopes into a basin. It mostly appears as the noun basining, in phrases like the rapid basining of the plateau or the basining of the shelf, and in structural geology it is set against anticline formation, where the rock arches upward instead.

7. 7
   verbtransitive

   To enclose or shelter something in a basin.

   Steep hills basin the little town and keep off the worst of the winter wind.

   Each young tree was basined with a ring of soil so that water would pool around its roots.

   Similarenclose, surround, encircle, shelter

   Note

   Hills do the enclosing in landscape writing: travelers are basinned among high broken ridges, and a path climbs the hill which basined the village. Orchard work uses the verb too. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bulletin of 1920 reports that a row of trees basined in April looked remarkably better by July than the check trees.

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