Basic (pronounced bey-sik)
(1) Of, relating to, or forming a base; fundamental.
(2) In chemistry, pertaining to, of the nature of, or containing a base; alkaline.
(3) In metallurgy, noting, pertaining to, or made by a steelmaking process (basic process) in which the furnace or converter is lined with a basic or non-siliceous material, mainly burned magnesite and a small amount of ground basic slag, to remove impurities from the steel.
(4) In geology, descriptor of a rock having relatively little silica.
(5) In military use, the lowest or initial form of anything (chiefly US).
(6) Of things elementary in character, essential, key, primary, basal, underlying.
(7) As a computer industry acronym, (BASIC and its forks, QBASIC, BASICA etc), a long-lived programming language: B(eginner's) A(ll-purpose) S(ymbolic) I(nstruction) C(ode).
(8) As "basic bitch", a subset of females deemed uninteresting on the basis of their tastes in pop culture being wholly mainstream. It began as a derogatory term but was also adopted (as a form of "inverse snobbery") by some as their "group identifier". The use seems to date from circa 2005.
1832: The word came originally from chemistry, the construct being base + ic, but has since been adopted by or applied in just about every field imaginable. Base in this sense (something from which other things extend; a foundation; a supporting, lower or bottom component of a structure or object) was from the Middle English base, bas & baas, from the Old French base, from the Latin basis, from the Ancient Greek βάσις (básis). In scientific use there exists a wealth of derived technical forms including gnathobasic, heptabasic, hexabasic, macrobasic, mesobasic, microbasic, monobasic, multibasic etc. The -ic suffix was from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique, from the Latin -icus, from the primitive Indo-European -kos & -ḱos, formed with the i-stem suffix -i- and the adjectival suffix -kos & -ḱos. The form existed also in the Ancient Greek as -ικός (-ikós), in Sanskrit as -इक (-ika) and the Old Church Slavonic as -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ); A doublet of -y. In European languages, adding -kos to noun stems carried the meaning "characteristic of, like, typical, pertaining to" while on adjectival stems it acted emphatically; in English it's always been used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning “of or pertaining to”. A precise technical use exists in physical chemistry where it's used to denote certain chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a higher oxidation number than in the equivalent compound with a name ending in the suffix -ous; (eg sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H₂SO₃). The programming language was created in 1964 by two US-based computer scientists, Thomas Kurtz (1928-2024) and Hungarian-born John Kemeny (1926-1992). Basic is a noun & adjective, basicity & basicness are nouns, abasic, basical & bibasic are adjectives and basically is an adverb; the noun plural is basics.
The Basic Bitch
Basic bitch, often clipped to the (sometimes affectionate) basic, is a pop-culture term of US origin. Although use outgrew the origins, it was intended as a pejorative descriptor of white, middle class females with boringly predictable, mainstream tastes in consumer goods and culture. Although basic's comparative is "more basic" and the superlative "most basic", English users are imaginative and when needing emphasis coined "uber basic" and "ultrabasic", the latter a repurposing from geology where it's a synonym for ultramafic (igneous rocks containing magnesium & iron with only ting quantities of silica, such as those found in the Earth’s mantle). The most pleasing collective for was "basic bitch brigade although Urban Dictionary helpfully fleshes out some alternatives. Variously interpreted as a variation on the earlier airhead, a general expression of misogyny and another unsuccessful attempt to invent a term white people would find offensive, basic bitch briefly generated a sizable critique. Although expressions of disapproval of materialist consumer culture had became common even before publication of Canadian-born US economist J.K. Galbraith's (1908–2006) The Affluent Society (1958) made it a bit of a thing, "basic bitch" appears to have offended just about all the usual suspects in the grievance industry. Feminists found it misogynistic and weren’t at mollified by the emergence of a term of male equivalence (basic bro), their general position probably demanding the cancelling of all cultural feminine signifiers. To them, the specifics were tiresomely irrelevant; "basic bitch" just another way to demean women. The left generally agreed, arguing it was unhelpful to target a stereotype of late capitalist femininity rather than adhere to their critique of consumer culture. Western capitalism, neutral on the squabble, soon commodified:
Basic Bitch Palette Kit by M·A·C Cosmetics, one of six in the M·A·C Girls collection (the companion products including Mischief Minx, Prissy Princess and Power Hungry).
Less predictable was the race-based criticism. Basic bitch was considered yet another attempt to create a term of disparagement to describe the white folk which they would find actually offensive and in that, like all previous attempts, it didn’t work. However, it clearly made sense only if applied to white, middle-class females so had the effect of creating yet another exclusive enclave of white privilege and one which, by definition, excluded other ethnicities, even if becoming a basic bitch was their aspiration. First noted in 2005 in a sub-set of popular music, "basic bitch" entered mainstream use circa 2009 and use appears to have peaked in 2014 although term may persist because it references a mode of behavior rather than anything specific to a time or place; it’s thus adaptable and generationally transferrable. It’s also an amusing example of one aspect of how Sisyphean battles in the pop-culture wars are waged. Really, all those who used alliterative "basic bitch" were asserting was: “our taste in pop music is better than their taste in pop music”.
In the matter of Judge Eugene Fahey
Lindsay Lohan v Take-Two Interactive Software Inc et al, New York Court of Appeals (No 24, pp1-11, 29 March 2018) was a case which took an unremarkable four years from filing to reach New York’s highest appellate court; Lindsay Lohan’s suit against the makers of video game Grand Theft Auto V was dismissed. In a unanimous ruling in March 2018, six judges of the New York Court of Appeals rejected her invasion of privacy claim which alleged one of the game’s characters was based on her. The judges found the "actress/singer" in the game merely resembled a “generic young woman” rather than anyone specific. Unfortunately the judges seemed unacquainted with the concept of the “basic white girl” which might have made the judgment more of a fun read.
Concurring with the 2016 ruling of the New York County Supreme Court which, on appeal, also found for the game’s makers, the judges, as a point of law, accepted the claim a computer game’s character "could be construed a portrait", which "could constitute an invasion of an individual’s privacy" but, on the facts of the case, the likeness was "not sufficiently strong". The “… artistic renderings are an indistinct, satirical representation of the style, look and persona of a modern, beach-going young woman... that is not recognizable as the plaintiff" Judge Eugene Fahey (b 1951) wrote in his ruling. Judge Fahey's words recalled those (in another context) of Potter Stewart (1915–1985; associate justice of the US Supreme Court 1958-1981) who in Jacobellis v Ohio (378 U.S. 184 (1964) wrote: “I shall not today attempt further to define… and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…” Judge Fahey knew a basic white girl when he saw one; he just couldn't name her. Lindsay Lohan's lawyers did not seek leave to appeal.
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