Base or basis?
base is a noun meaning “Something from which other things extend; a foundation”; basis is a noun meaning “A physical base or foundation”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) base is about 1.7 times as common as basis.
What is the difference between base and basis?
| base | basis | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, verb, adjective | noun |
| Meaning | Something from which other things extend; a foundation A supporting, lower or bottom component of a structure or object To give as its foundation or starting point; to lay the foundation of | A physical base or foundation A starting point, base or foundation for an argument or hypothesis |
| Example | Troops have been based in Munich since the end of World War II | I wonder if the South Korean side has any basis that its smog is from China |
| Forms | bases | bases |
| Pronunciation | /beɪs/ /bæɪs/ /beːs/ | /ˈbeɪ.sɪs/ /ˈbæɪ.sɪs/ |
| In writing | 112 times per million words | 65 times per million words |
Sources: base and basis in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of base and basis
base
- 1
Something from which other things extend; a foundation
- 2
To give as its foundation or starting point; to lay the foundation of
- 3
Low in place or position
- 4
USThe game of prisoners' bars
- 5
Alternative form of BASE
- 6
Acronym of building, antenna-tower, span, earth
- 7
A supporting, lower or bottom component of a structure or object
- 8
To be located (at a particular place)
Troops have been based in Munich since the end of World War II
basis
- 1
A physical base or foundation
- 2
A starting point, base or foundation for an argument or hypothesis
I wonder if the South Korean side has any basis that its smog is from China
- 3
An underlying condition or circumstance
Allow us to compete on an equal basis
- 4
A regular frequency
You should brush your teeth on a daily basis at minimum
- 5
The difference between the cash price a dealer pays to a farmer for his produce and an agreed reference price, which is usually the futures price at which the given crop is trading at a commodity…
Included in the basis could be elevation, cleaning, freight by truck and/or rail, government inspection fees, administration fees, interest and storage charges as well as…
- 6
In a vector space, a linearly independent set of vectors spanning the whole vector space
- 7
Amount paid for an investment, including commissions and other expenses
- 8
A collection of subsets ("basis elements") of a set, such that this collection covers the set, and for any two basis elements which both contain an element of the set, there is a third basis element…
The collection of all possible unions of basis elements of a basis is said to be the topology generated by that basis
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, base or basis?
base appears 112 times per million words; basis 65 times per million words.
base 112 times per million wordsbasis 65 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search base vs basis?
“base vs basis” is searched about 50 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“basis vs base”, “base or basis”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.