basin
noun · verb
Simple meaning
An area of land from which water drains into a common outlet.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
baysuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈbeɪsən
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A natural depression in the surface of the land often with a lake at the bottom of it
A depression, natural or artificial, containing water.
geography
An area of land from which water drains into a common outlet; drainage basin.
A wide bowl for washing, sometimes affixed to a wall.
verb
To create a concavity or depression in.
To serve as or become a basin.
To shelter or enclose in a basin.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary (estimated)
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- General English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (geography) An area of land from which water drains into a common outlet; drainage basin.
Used this way, basin is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use basin
- “She mixed the dough in a large basin.”noun
- “He ran some water in the basin and splashed it on his face.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The entire geographical area drained by a river and its tributaries.
A storage site (such as a small reservoir) that delays the flow of water downstream.
An industrial region in the Ukraine.
The entire geographical area drained by a river and its tributaries.
A basin used by bedridden patients for vomiting.
A storage site similar to a detention basin but the water in storage is permanently obstructed from flowing downstream.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- sedimentnoun
- watershednoun
- irrigationnoun
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: natural depression in the surface of the land often with a lake at the bottom of it
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.