abase
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "abase", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "abase" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "abase" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
abase is aEnglishverb. It means: To lower, as in condition in life, office, rank, etc., so as to cause pain or hurt feelings; to degrade, to depress, to humble, to humiliate. Pronounced /əˈbeɪs/.
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See how abase compares against similar English words.
Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | abase |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /əˈbeɪs/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for abase is 5 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /əˈbeɪs/. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for abase in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Late Middle English abaishen, abashen, abaisse, abassen, abesse, abessen (“to be upset; to embarrass; to surprise; to confound; to bend down, stoop; to abase, degrade, disgrace”), from Middle French abaisser, from Old French abaissier, abessier (“to pr… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is abase, spelled A-B-A-S-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To lower, as in condition in life, office, rank, etc., so as to cause pain or hurt feelings; to degrade, to depress, to humble, to humiliate.
- 2To lower physically; to depress; to cast or throw down; to stoop.
- 3To lower in value, in particular by altering the content of alloys in coins; to debase.
Etymology
From Late Middle English abaishen, abashen, abaisse, abassen, abesse, abessen (“to be upset; to embarrass; to surprise; to confound; to bend down, stoop; to abase, degrade, disgrace”), from Middle French abaisser, from Old French abaissier, abessier (“to prostrate oneself; to lower, reduce”) (also compare Old French esbahir (“to amaze”), Vulgar Latin abbassiāre (“to lower”)), from a- (prefix indicating movement towards something) (from Latin ad (“toward, to”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂éd (“at, to”)) + baissier (“to lower”) (from Medieval Latin bassus (“short of stature, low; base”), possibly from Ancient Greek βᾰ́σῐς (bắsĭs, “foot; base, foundation”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gʷem- (“to step”)). The spelling of the English word has been influenced by base, thus ostensibly analyzable as a- (“towards”) + base. There exist verb cognates in galloromance languages such as Catalan abaixar (“lower; abase”) and Occitan abaissar, and similar word construction in other romance languages as Spanish abajo (“down, downstairs; below”).
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter A in our English index: