What is ‘based’ based on?

“Is it connected to plant-based?” asked my husband, as though answering a quiz. I was trying to interest him in the 21st-century meaning of based, of which he had never heard.

The New York Times never stops trying to give a new etymology for based, according to Jeff Bercovici, who is co-head of the newsroom of the San Francisco Standard.

His actual words were “trying to retcon the etymology,” but I didn’t know that retcon means to give “retroactive continuity” to a thing, as Dallas did by saying that Bobby Ewing’s death was just a dream.

On Twitter, the journalist quoted an example of the retconned etymology, provided last year by Stephen Marche, a guest columnist of the New York Times: “My favorite new slang word is based – short for ‘based in fact’ or ‘based in reality.’”

It is short for no such thing. Unlikely as it might seem, the derivation is from freebase, cocaine chemically prepared for inhalation, which became popular in California in the 1970s.

A name for a freebase addict was basehead (like crackhead). Along came a rapper called Lil B. In 2010 he told Complex, a website for people interested in Boosie Badazz, Waka Flocka Flame and clothing from Weekend Offender: “When I was younger, based was a negative term that meant like ‘dopehead,’ or ‘basehead.’ People used to make fun of me. They was like, ‘You’re based.’” So Lil B adopted an alter ego: the Based God. To be based, he said, was “not being scared of what people think about you. Not being afraid to do what you wanna do. Being positive.”

From there, based was picked up as a word of approval on the internet, notably on 4chan, a website on parts of which the alt-right lurked. With a general meaning of “non-woke” it became an all-purpose term of approbation, not just for Confederates with horns.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s June 2025 World edition.