bast – English noun declension

English noun forms of bast

Noun: bast
Singularbast
Pluralbasts

Sample Sentences

  • [T]here would be seen his face, or that of his elder brother, peering down. A guttural sound, and the tip-tap of bast slippers beating the narrow wooden stairs, and he would stand before one without coat, a little bent, in leather apron, with sleeves turned back, blinking[…] [1912, John Galsworthy, Quality:]
  • At the far end of the houses the head gardener stood waiting for his mistress, and he gave her strips of bass to tie up her nosegay. This she did slowly and laboriously, with knuckly old fingers that shook. [1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XIX, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:]
  • I thought I saw Him in the Long Walk there, by the bed of Nelly Roche, tending a fallen flower with a wisp of bast. [1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth, hardback edition, page 87]
  • He had taken along a long bast rope in his sleigh, since it was the custom on longer journeys to have a spare rope in case the reins needed mending. [1997, ‘Egil's Saga’, translated by Bernard Scudder, The Sagas of Icelanders, Penguin, published 2001, page 145:]

Etymology

From Middle English bast, from Old English bæst (“bast, inner bark of trees from which ropes were made”), from Proto-West Germanic *bast (compare the Swedish bast, Dutch bast, German Bast), perhaps an alteration of Proto-Indo-European *bʰask-, *bʰasḱ- (“bundle”) (compare English basket, Middle Irish basc (“necklace”), Latin fascis (“bundle”), Albanian bashkë (“tied, linked”)), though this is likely a substrate word and/or Wanderwort. See: Middle English Nouns 'bast', Old English Nouns 'bæst', Swedish Nouns 'bast', Dutch Nouns 'bast', German Nouns 'Bast', Latin Nouns 'fascis'.

Verbs referencing "bast"

Swedish Nouns bast.