Bass

How to spell bass

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bass

What does bass mean?

1. nounThe lowest range of musical pitch, or an instrument or voice producing it.
2. nounAn edible spiny-finned fish found in fresh or sea water.

Bass in a sentence

• The bass player anchored the rhythm section all night.

• She grilled the bass with lemon and herbs for dinner.

• Turn down the bass so the speakers stop rattling.

• The anglers caught a large bass from the lake at dawn.

Where does bass come from?

Language of origin: Italian

This single spelling actually hides two completely separate words. The musical 'bass' (rhyming with 'base') comes from the Italian basso, meaning 'low', which itself goes back to the Late Latin bassus, 'short, low, of little height'; it entered English in the 1400s and its spelling was reshaped under the influence of the unrelated English word 'base', which is why the low note ended up looking like the word for a foundation. The fish 'bass' (rhyming with 'mass') is a native word, descending from Old English bærs, the name of a spiny river fish, related to Germanic words meaning 'bristle' because of the sharp dorsal spines. Over time the older form 'barse' lost its 'r' in speech, leaving the modern 'bass'. So the same four letters carry two distinct histories, one Italian and one Anglo-Saxon, and the only way to tell them apart is by sound and context.

How the word is built

• Single root word; the music sense from Italian basso (low), the fish sense from Old English bærs (a spiny fish)

Words that sound like bass

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• base: The lowest part or supporting structure on which something rests.