basic
part of speech
adjective (basic, more basic, most basic); noun (the basics)
meaning for a pupil
1) Basic means simple and the most important, the first part that everything else is built on: basic facts, basic skills. tree →
2) Basic means plain, without extras: a basic phone, a basic room. tree →
3) Basic needs are things everyone must have to live, like food, water, shelter and safety. tree →
4) In chemistry, basic means alkaline, the opposite of acidic. tree →
sense in the lessons
In maths, «basic facts» are simple sums and times tables you know by heart; you learn the basics before hard problems. In citizenship and science lessons, living things have basic needs. In everyday life, a basic version of a product has fewer features. Phrases: «the basics», «basic needs», «basic skills», «back to basics», «basic first aid».
examples
- Learn the basic facts first: 6 × 7 = 42. tree →
- Food, water and shelter are basic needs. tree →
- We learned the basics of first aid. tree →
- The cabin was very basic, with no electricity. tree →
- This is a basic phone with no internet. tree →
- Reading is a basic skill for every subject. tree →
- Let's go back to basics and practise adding. tree →
- Soap is basic, and lemon juice is acidic. tree →
note
Adverb: basically (often just used as a filler: «Basically, I forgot»). Spelling: basIc (not «basick»). «The basics» is always plural.
In the corpora
- Whatever comes, learning the basics yourself, such as writing, still matters, because it trains your own thinking.
- Many people already use AI as a helper at work, and knowing the basics yourself helps you check it.
- Faces show basic feelings such as happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust.
- The basic needs are food, water, a home (shelter), clothes and safety.
- The most basic rules of how a country is run are written in its constitution.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «basic» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.