Basque

How to spell basque

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce basque

What does basque mean?

1. nounA member of a people of the western Pyrenees, or their language.

Basque in a sentence

• She spent a year learning basque in a small town near Bilbao.

• The basque has no proven relatives among European languages.

Where does basque come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes directly from the French basque, which is simply the French name for the Basque people who live across the western Pyrenees in Spain and France. In the world of dressmaking it was borrowed into English in the nineteenth century to describe a tight bodice with a short extension flaring out below the waist, a style associated with traditional Basque costume. The garment sense and the ethnic name are spelled identically because they are literally the same French word, and that French ending is exactly why English keeps the unexpected '-que' rather than a plain '-sk'. The ultimate origin of the people's own name is debated and probably pre-Roman, since the Basque language itself is unrelated to the Indo-European languages around it, so the deeper roots are genuinely uncertain. What is clear is the route into English: French supplied both the spelling and the fashion sense.

How the word is built

• basque (from the name of the Basque people of the western Pyrenees, via French)