BASENESS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does baseness mean? 

• BASENESS (noun)
  The noun BASENESS has 1 sense:

1. unworthiness by virtue of lacking higher values

  Familiarity information: BASENESS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BASENESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Unworthiness by virtue of lacking higher values

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

baseness; contemptibility; despicability; despicableness; sordidness

Hypernyms ("baseness" is a kind of...):

unworthiness (the quality or state of lacking merit or value)

Derivation:

base (having or showing an ignoble lack of honor or morality)

base (not adhering to ethical or moral principles)

 Context examples 

Villainy is the matter; baseness is the matter; deception, fraud, conspiracy, are the matter; and the name of the whole atrocious mass is—HEEP!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

What baseness!

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

The rest was left contingent on the value of my professional exertions; in other and more expressive words, on the baseness of my nature, the cupidity of my motives, the poverty of my family, the general moral (or rather immoral) resemblance between myself and—HEEP.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I had no consolation in seeing how different she was from this detestable Rufus with the mulberry-coloured great-coat, for I felt that in the very difference between them, in the self-denial of her pure soul and the sordid baseness of his, the greatest danger lay.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)