baseborn

English

Etymology

base +‎ born

Adjective

baseborn (not comparable)

1. bastard, illegitimate
   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling:

     He said, "Though the law did not positively allow the destroying such base-born children, yet it held them to be the children of nobody; that the Church considered them as the children of nobody; and that at the best, they ought to be brought up to the lowest and vilest offices of the commonwealth."

2. Of lowly birth.
   • 2001, Bernard Lewis, Islam in history: ideas, people, and events in the Middle East, page 248:

     Non-Arabs, of whatever racial origin, were of course baseborn, but so too were many Arabs who, for one reason or another, were not full and free members of a tribe.