Basin

How to spell basin

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce basin

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does basin mean?

1. nounA wide, round open container, typically used for holding water for washing.
2. nounA large area of land drained by a river and its tributaries, or a natural hollow holding water.

Basin in a sentence

• She filled the basin with warm water before washing the dishes.

• The report studied flooding across the entire river basin.

• The plumber fitted a new basin in the upstairs bathroom.

• Heavy rain raised water levels throughout the mountain basin.

Where does basin come from?

Language of origin: French

The word arrived in English in the early 1200s from Old French bacin, which named a wide, shallow bowl for holding water. That French word descended from the Late Latin bacchinon, a term for a water vessel that the Roman writer Gregory of Tours recorded around the sixth century, and the root is thought to be ultimately of Celtic or Gaulish origin, describing a hollowed-out container. Over time the literal washing bowl gave its name to anything shaped like one, so by the seventeenth century geographers were using basin for a low, bowl-like stretch of land that collects water, such as a river basin, and engineers used it for an enclosed dock. The single 's' and the unstressed second syllable are the usual spelling traps, since the ending sounds like a faint 'in' rather than a clear vowel. A useful memory hook is that a basin is simply a bigger relative of the word 'bowl' in function, even though it is not related in form.

How the word is built

• basin (from Old French bacin, a wide bowl); from Late Latin bacchinon, a water vessel