basket
Pluralbaskets
Verbbaskets, basketing, basketed
Pluralbaskets
Formsbaskets, basketing, basketed
- 1A lightweight container, typically round, open at the top and tapering toward the base.
He carried a wicker basket of fresh bread to the market.
The baskets were stacked neatly along the edge of the farm stall.
Similarhamper
Note
The everyday sense the rest are built on, and its origins are a puzzle. Middle English took it from Anglo-Norman baschet, a word of obscure origin. One theory traces it through Late Latin bascauda, "kettle, table-vessel", to a Celtic root meaning "bundle, load". In use it often names the contents as well as the container: a basket of fruit means the fruit as much as the wicker.
- 2In basketball, the circular hoop with a suspended net that serves as the goal players aim the ball through.
The forward leaped and sent the ball cleanly through the basket.
Defenders crowded the area beneath the basket to block shots.
Note
The goal that names the game: basketball is the ball you put through this basket. Players drive toward the basket, crowd beneath it and shoot at it, so the word points to a place on the court as much as to the rim itself. The same word also covers a successful shot, and context tells you whether a player went to the basket or made one.
- 3In an online shop, the listing of items a customer has selected before placing the order.
He left two items in his basket overnight and forgot to check out.
Adding the jacket to her basket, she went looking for matching shoes.
Similarcart
Note
Online shopping borrowed the shop's carrying basket for its list of chosen items, and the verbs came with it. Items are added to a basket, left in it or removed from it, and the shopper finally checks out. Nothing is carried, but the metaphor holds: the list fills up as you browse and empties when you order.
- 4A container of wire or plastic, shaped like a basket, in which a shopper carries goods around a store before paying for them.
She picked up a basket at the door and filled it with vegetables.
Stacks of plastic baskets stood just inside the supermarket entrance.
- 5In basketball, the act of sending the ball through the hoop to score points.
A three-point basket tied the score with seconds remaining.
She sank a long basket from well beyond the arc.
Note
Here the word counts. A basket is a score, so it takes numbers and verbs of success: a three-point basket, a last-second basket, to sink or make a basket. Where the hoop is a place you go to, this is something you get, and two teams trading baskets are trading points.
- 6A collection or set of intangible things considered together as a group.
The new policy addresses a basket of social concerns at once.
Economists watch a basket of indicators to judge the economy's health.
Similarset, range, bundle, package, collection
Note
A figure that thrives in policy and negotiating prose, where a basket of issues, demands or concerns is a bundle meant to be handled together. Gichinga Ndirangu, writing for the Heinrich Böll Foundation in 2004, complains that the basket of issues developing countries wanted addressed got scant attention. The construction is nearly always a basket of followed by a plural noun, and economists' basket of goods is the same figure made exact.
- 7The team sport of basketball.
A few of us are going to play some basket after work if you want to join.
Basket is hugely popular across many countries.
Similarbasketball, hoops
Note
A clipped name for the sport, used without an article, as in let's play some basket. It stays uncountable, so you play basket, never a basket, and in that frame no one mistakes it for the hoop or the score. Outside such phrases, the full form basketball is the unambiguous choice.
- 8Short for basket of goods.
Analysts revised the basket to reflect changing consumer habits.
Rising fuel costs pushed up the overall value of the basket.
Note
A clipping of basket of goods, the standard set of hypothetical purchases whose price a consumer price index tracks. Economists revise the basket, price it and watch it rise, and in that setting the short form is unambiguous. It is the precise, measured version of the loose "collection" figure.
- 9To place something in a basket or baskets.
The pickers basket each peach by hand to prevent bruising.
He basketed the laundry and carried it upstairs.
Note
The verb's spelling trips writers: the t does not double, so the forms are basketed and basketing, never basketted. It is transitive, so you basket the peaches or basket the laundry. The publishing verb for linking royalty advances shares exactly these forms.
- 10A cozy bed for a cat, typically shaped like a small open container.
The cat refused to sleep anywhere except its favorite basket.
She lined the basket with a warm blanket for the old tabby.
- 11In hot-air ballooning, the wicker gondola suspended beneath the balloon, in which the pilot and passengers ride.
She gripped the rim of the basket as the wind picked up.
Six passengers crowded into the basket for the dawn flight.
Similargondola
Note
Balloonists keep the plain word for the craft their passengers ride in, with gondola as the grander alternative. You climb into the basket, grip its rim and crowd into it for a flight. The word names the whole carriage beneath the balloon, pilot and all, rather than a simple container.
- 12Slang for the bulge made by a man's penis as seen through tight clothing.
His swimsuit left his basket clearly outlined.
The model's tight jeans accentuated his basket.
Note
Here the word is about appearance: what tight jeans or a swimsuit show, not the anatomy underneath. The same caution about slang applies, and the typical verbs are visual. A basket is outlined, accentuated or on display. Where the anatomical sense can turn up in talk of a sports injury, this one belongs to talk about looks.
- 13Slang for the penis together with the surrounding genital area.
The cup protected his basket during the match.
He winced as the tight seam pressed against his basket.
Similarcrotch, groin, package, junk
Note
Slang from LGBTQ usage for the genitals taken as one region. Keep it among people who share the usage: in mixed or formal company it reads as frank sexual talk, however innocent the everyday word sounds. It is close kin to the bulge seen through clothing, but this sense names the body itself, not how it looks.
- 14A milder, more polite substitute for 'bastard,' used as a term of abuse or annoyance.
The old basket never returned my ladder.
Some basket keyed my car overnight.
Similarbeggar, blighter, rotter
Note
A sound-alike stand-in for bastard, close enough to carry the insult and soft enough to say where the real word would offend: wait till I catch you, you little basket! It usually comes with little or old and sounds more exasperated than vicious. The joke works only because the listener hears the word it replaces.
- 15A line-dance figure in which the men hold the women's lower backs while the women grip the men's shoulders, and the group of four spins until the women's feet leave the ground.
The instructor warned that the basket only works smoothly with exactly four dancers.
They built up speed until the basket swept both women off their feet.
- 16The cone-shaped drogue trailing on a hose that a receiving aircraft's probe plugs into during probe-and-drogue aerial refueling.
The tanker streamed its basket, and the fighter slid forward to engage it.
Turbulence whipped the basket aside just as the probe approached.
Similardrogue
Note
Aircrew's plain name for the drogue, the cone trailed on a hose that a receiving aircraft's probe has to meet. It belongs to working talk, as in the warning don't smoosh the basket, while drogue or para-drogue is the formal term. A tanker streams its basket, and the receiver engages it.
- 17To cross-link the royalty advances of several works so the creator receives no further payment until all of them reach a set level of success.
Publishers sometimes basket an author's trilogy, withholding earnings until the whole series recoups its advances.
The contract let the studio basket her three scores together.
Note
Trade jargon from the contract page, and it most naturally takes the passive with together: paperback, serial and book-club rights "would be basketed together," as Publishers Weekly put it in 1974. It covers far more than books. Thomas Whiteside's The Blockbuster Complex (1981) sets "basketing" in quotation marks while applying it to hardcover, paperback and movie rights alike. Unlike the literal verb, nothing is physically gathered; only the accounts are pooled.
- 18The bell- or vase-shaped body of a Corinthian capital, the part enclosed by the column's carved acanthus foliage.
The acanthus leaves spring from the basket and curl outward beneath the abacus.
Weathering had worn the basket of each capital nearly smooth.
Note
An architect's picture word. Edward Hall's Civil Architecture (1832) says the Corinthian capital always resembles a deep narrow basket covered with a tile and wrapped in foliage, and the term names that core. In descriptions the leaves spring from the basket and curl outward. Bell and vase are alternative names for the same part.
- 19The guard protecting the hand on a sword or singlestick: the woven or plated covering that shields the fingers on a bladed weapon.
The old saber's steel basket had rusted but still shielded the grip.
A fencer's hand stayed safe inside the cupped basket of the hilt.
Note
An old name for the hand-guard, which survives most clearly in the compound basket hilt, the cage-like guard of a sword. On its own the word sounds archaic. A modern writer describing a saber would say guard or hilt and keep basket hilt for that particular design.
- 20A singlestick fitted with a basket hilt, used as a practice or fencing weapon.
The cadets squared off with baskets in the training yard.
Baw! damme, but I'll fight you both, one after the other——with baskets.
1773, Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to ConquerNote
The weapon named for its guard: a singlestick was called a basket after the hand-guard on its hilt. A character in Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer offers to fight two men one after the other "with baskets", which is a challenge to a bout of singlestick. Outside such period scenes the word would puzzle readers.
- 21On a stagecoach, the pair of outside seats set facing each other and exposed to the weather.
Passengers without means crowded into the basket while the wealthy rode inside.
In my time, the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stage-coach. Its fopperies come down not only as inside passengers, but in the very basket.
1773, Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to ConquerNote
A coaching word that died with the stagecoach. The basket was the outside seating, open to the weather, and Oliver Goldsmith makes a joke of it in She Stoops to Conquer (1773). The town's follies now travel so fast, he writes, that they come down not only as inside passengers but in the very basket. Use it only for historical color, and explain it as you go.
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Origin
Basket comes from Middle English basket, from Anglo-Norman baschet (also bascat), whose ultimate origin is obscure. One theory links it to Late Latin bascauda ("kettle, table-vessel") and a Proto-Celtic root *baskis ("bundle, load"), but this is now widely doubted for phonetic reasons, and the word is often seen as a substrate borrowing.