Definitions

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

  • adjective Of, relating to, or located at or near the base, especially the base of the skull.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Lying or situated at the base; fundamental.
  • Relating to or situated at the base, especially of the skull.

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

  • adjective Relating to, or situated at, the base.
  • adjective rare Lower; inferior; applied to impulses or springs of action.

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

  • adjective Of, pertaining to, or located at a base, but especially at the base of the skull or a lung.
  • adjective Lower; inferior; base.

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

  • adjective of or relating to or located at the base

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin basilāris, from Latin basis, base; see basis.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French basilaire, from Latin basis.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word basilar.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • JM is up in the air about basilar matters.

    September 12, 2010

  • The basilar membrane of the inner ear contains hair cells that are frequency selective, firing only in response to a certain band of frequencies. These are stretched out across the membrane from low frequencies to high; low-frequency sounds excite hair cells on one end of the basilar membrane, medium frequency sounds excite the hair cells in the middle, and high-frequency sounds excite them at the other end. . . . Because the different tones are spread out across the surface topography of the membrane, this is called a tonotopic map.
    Daniel J. Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession (New York: Penguin Random House, 2007), p. 28

    June 19, 2017