baseline
[beys-lahyn]
- Baseball. the area between bases within which a base runner must keep when running from one base to another.
- Tennis. the line at each end of a tennis court, parallel to the net, that marks the in-bounds limit of play.
- (in perspective drawing) a horizontal line in the immediate foreground formed by the intersection of the ground plane and the picture plane.
- a basic standard or level; guideline: to establish a baseline for future studies.
- a specific value or values that can serve as a comparison or control.
- Typography. the imaginary line on which the bottoms of primary letters align.
- Surveying. See under triangulation(def 1).
- Electronics. a horizontal or vertical line formed on the face of a cathode-ray tube by the sweep of the scanning dot.
- Naval Architecture. a line on the body plan or sheer plan of a hull, representing a horizontal reference plane for vertical dimensions.
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- basic or essential.
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Origin of baseline
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Related Words
guideline, control, criterion, measure, standard, diagnostic, touchstone, threshold, basis, example, precedent, paradigm, exemplarExamples from the Web for baseline
Contemporary Examples
“There is a baseline agreement when it comes to campus rape: the current system is failing these students,” she added.
A system to ensure that providers have a baseline competency in the areas where they choose to practice makes sense to me.
We can aim at an economy that makes dignity and security a baseline and lets people cut their paths from there.
Women have learned to operate with a baseline level of fear, one that dips or peaks depending on our surroundings.
The baseline question, as it so often is in politics these days, is about emotional resistance.
Historical Examples
On the 17th a baseline was laid down on the plateau, and Blake was able to commence his survey of the island.
The Home of the BlizzardDouglas Mawson
Meanwhile his baseline had been extended twenty miles to the westto near Noyon.
The crescent rests on a baseline formed by the slowly-proceeding line of women, children, and baggage-horses.
At Home with the PatagoniansGeorge Chaworth Musters
With two tracers, separated on a baseline of a few million kilometers, we can plot position closely.
Evil Out of OnzarMark Ganes
Anyway, he knocked it straight down the third baseline and fooled the Journals rivals, for their fielders were not on duty.
Joan of the JournalHelen Diehl Olds
baseline
- surveying a measured line through a survey area from which triangulations are made
- an imaginary line, standard of value, etc, by which things are measured or compared
- a line at each end of a tennis court that marks the limit of play
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for baseline
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper