Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Ignoble; contemptible.
  • adjective Offensive Born to parents not married to each other.
  • adjective Of humble birth.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of base or low birth; born out of wedlock; of low or mean parentage or origin; spurious.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Born out of wedlock.
  • adjective Born of low parentage.
  • adjective Vile; mean.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective bastard, illegitimate
  • adjective Of lowly birth.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective illegitimate
  • adjective of low birth or station (`base' is archaic in this sense)

Etymologies

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Examples

  • “She has agreed to meet the Caesar in the field, and he will not hesitate, like a baseborn miscreant, to take every advantage in the encounter, which, I grieve to say, may in all likelihood be fatal to my mistress.”

    Count Robert of Paris 2008

  • If they believe in anything at all, it is this: They view us as a reeking collection of wretched, baseborn rabble, who are, on an individual level, a few billion neurons short of being governable by honest means.

    Within the Architecture of Denial and Duplicity: The Democratic Party and the Infantile Omnipotence of The Ruling Class 2007

  • "Until by the time they are forty, they have raging gout and big bellies and false teeth and baseborn mistresses spread halfway across England."

    Hero Come Back Laurens, Stephanie 2005

  • If it were so, the Countess would be no Countess, Anna Lovel would simply be Anna Murray, penniless, baseborn, and a fit wife for the tailor, should the tailor think fit to take her.

    Lady Anna 2004

  • All these years, it was believed that Sienna, our houseguest was but a baseborn mutt, a dog of undistinguished and humble origins.

    Background revealed ladygoat 2004

  • All these years, it was believed that Sienna, our houseguest was but a baseborn mutt, a dog of undistinguished and humble origins.

    August 2004 ladygoat 2004

  • Moreover, more of the courtiers than Anne had begun to notice the king's growing affection for his baseborn son.

    This Scepter'd Isle Lackey, Mercedes 2004

  • I am the King's true daughter and an anointed queen; you are his baseborn son.

    Mary Queen Of Scotland And The Isles George, Margaret 1987

  • I am the King's true daughter and an anointed queen; you are his baseborn son.

    Mary Queen Of Scotland And The Isles George, Margaret 1987

  • And as he talked with them, that baseborn man, whose name was

    The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete The Challoner Revision Anonymous

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