Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A line serving as a basis, as for measurement, calculation, or location.
  • noun Something, such as a set of data, used as a basis for comparison or as a control in a study.
  • noun A starting point.
  • noun Baseball The base path.
  • noun The boundary line at either end of a court, as in basketball or tennis.
  • noun The area near this boundary line.
  • noun A style of play in tennis in which the player remains near the baseline and rarely approaches the net.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun an imaginary line or standard by which things are measured or compared.
  • noun the back line at each end of a tennis court.
  • noun (Baseball) the lines between bases on a baseball field along which a baseball player must run while running the bases.
  • noun a measurement that represents the value of a physical quantity (such as a voltage, or a level of radioactivity) in the absence of effects from other variables in a measurement, test or experiment; a control value.
  • noun any horizontal line in a plot, graph, or diagram, or on a visual display in an electronic device, used as a reference point to which other values are referred.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A line that is a base for measurement or for construction.
  • noun A datum used as the basis for calculation or for comparison.
  • noun typography A line used as the basis for the alignment of glyphs.
  • noun tennis The line at the farthest ends of the court indicating the boundary of the area of play.
  • noun engineering A configuration of software, hardware, or a process that is established and documented as a point of reference.
  • verb engineering, computing To provide a baseline for measurement.
  • verb tennis To play from the baseline.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the lines a baseball player must follow while running the bases
  • noun an imaginary line or standard by which things are measured or compared
  • noun the back line bounding each end of a tennis or handball court; when serving the server must not step over this line

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

base +‎ line

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Examples

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  • In shipbuilding, a line on the body plan or sheer plan of a hull, representing a horizontal reference plane for vertical dimensions.

    August 21, 2009