Baseline

How to spell baseline

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce baseline

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does baseline mean?

1. nounA starting measurement or standard used as a fixed point for later comparison.
2. nounThe line at each end of a tennis court or the boundary in certain other sports.

Baseline in a sentence

• The nurse recorded a baseline blood pressure before the trial began.

• She hit a powerful return from the baseline to win the point.

• The budget report compared this year's spending against last year's baseline.

• The umpire ruled that the ball had landed just behind the baseline.

Where does baseline come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a compound formed in English by joining 'base' and 'line', both of which travelled into the language from Latin through Old French. 'Base' descends from the Latin basis, meaning a foundation or pedestal, which the Romans themselves had borrowed from the Greek basis, literally a 'stepping' or 'that on which one stands', from bainein, 'to walk or step'. 'Line' comes from the Latin linea, originally a 'linen thread' stretched taut by builders and surveyors to mark a straight edge, derived from linum, the flax plant. The combined term emerged in the nineteenth century, first in surveying and sport, where a 'base line' was the measured reference line from which other distances were judged. From those literal uses it spread into science, finance, and medicine as a figure of speech for a fixed starting value against which later change is compared, and the two words eventually fused into the single spelling 'baseline'.

How the word is built

• base (foundation, bottom)
• line (a marked length or boundary)