basil

Other forms of basil

plural

basils·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about basil

What does basil mean?

basil means "any of several Old World tropical aromatic annual or perennial herbs of the genus Ocimum". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in basil?

basil has 2 syllables: bas-il. The stress falls on "bas". In IPA it is /ˈbæzəl/.

What is another word for basil?

Close synonyms include St. Basil, Basil of Caesarea, Basil the Great, St. Basil the Great, sweet basil. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is basil a common word?

basil is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.