Basting refers to the culinary technique of spooning or brushing juices, fat, or marinade over food (notably meat) during cooking to keep it moist and add flavor. The term also appears in sewing contexts to describe gathering fabric with stitches. In cooking, it describes a recurring action during roasting, while in sewing it denotes a temporary stitch that holds fabric in place. Both senses share a sense of continual application or attachment.
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"• The chef basted the turkey every 20 minutes to keep it juicy."
"• She basted the roast with its own juices and a dab of butter."
"• In the sewing class, we basted the lining to the outer fabric before final stitching."
"• He warned not to baste the fabric too tightly, or it may pucker."
Basting originates from the noun baste, which traces to the Middle English baste (1150–1500s), from Old French baster, meaning to plunge or dip, and ultimately from the Frankish roots related to booting or bracing actions. In culinary use, baste emerged to describe the frequent spooning or pouring of its own juices onto meat while roasting, a technique designed to baste moisture and flavor into the food. The sewing sense of baste—temporary stitches to hold fabric in place—appears later in English, from the verb baster meaning to hasten, accelerate, or fasten; it shares the root idea of attaching or securing temporarily before final stitching. The modern sense of basting in cooking solidified in the 17th–18th centuries as kitchen practices standardized meat roasting techniques. In contemporary usage, basting is widely known as a method to baste the meat with pan drippings, often with added butter, wine, or marinade, and in sewing as a provisional stitching step prior to permanent seams. First known written usages appear in culinary contexts in late medieval English cookbooks and in tailoring manuals that described temporary stitches for fitting garments.
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💡 These words have similar meanings to "basting" and can often be used interchangeably.
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Words that rhyme with "basting"
-ing sounds
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You pronounce it as BEY-sting with two syllables, stress on the first. IPA: US /ˈbeɪstɪŋ/, UK /ˈbeɪstɪŋ/, AU /ˈbeɪstɪŋ/. Start with the vowel sound as in “bay,” then the st- cluster: /st/ followed by the reduced /ɪŋ/ ending. Tip: keep the mouth open slightly for the diphthong in the first syllable and finish with a crisp /st/ onset.
Common errors: treating the first syllable as a short ‘bat’ instead of the long /eɪ/ diphthong; slurring or dropping the /t/ in the /st/ cluster; finishing with a weak /ŋ/ or nasal; or misplacing stress as BEAST-ing rather than BEY-sting? Correction: ensure the /eɪ/ is the vowel in the first syllable, clearly articulate the /st/ cluster, and end with a crisp /ɪŋ/; keep the tongue high behind the upper teeth for /t/ and finish with a clean nasal.
In US/UK/AU, the main difference is vowel timing and rhoticity. US tends to have rhotic sounds and a slightly longer /eɪ/ before /st/, UK often preserves a tighter /eɪ/ with less vowel reduction, and AU tends to be even more lenient in vowel length. The /t/ remains a crisp /t/; non-rhotic varieties may elide or soften the /r/ influence only if the word is in broader dialects. Overall, the primary difference is subtle vowel quality and the amount of crispness in the /t/.
The difficulty lies in the /eɪ/ diphthong and the /st/ cluster: you must transition smoothly from a long vowel into a stressed syllable while producing a precise /s/ followed by /t/. Many speakers insert a softening or a break between /eɪ/ and /st/, or replace /t/ with a glottal stop. Focus on keeping the /st/ cluster strong and continuous into the final /ɪŋ/. Practicing the sequence /beɪst/ clearly helps.
A word-specific nuance is the living tension between the first syllable’s vowel quality and the /st/ cluster: you must sustain the /eɪ/ while starting the /st/ crisply. The /ɪŋ/ ending should be clearly nasalized without adding extra vowels. The result should feel like BEY-sting, with the /t/ clearly audible before the nasal. This combination marks perfect enunciation for the culinary term.
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