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Comment by saagarjha | Hacker News Reader

That’s not what the word means to you, that’s how you feel about content that the word is associated with. Just like “homeopathy” generally makes me think “pseudoscience” but really means “dilute a bunch of stuff and use it as medicine”. It’s natural to feel that content that is “based” to people who use that word is “cringe” to you because you disagree with their opinions on what is “based”, but it doesn’t change the meaning of based but instead means “I just think that thing is cringe myself”.

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I think you've got the definition of homeopathy incorrect. I checked wikipedia and it says, "Homeopathy or homoeopathy is a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine." It does mean pseudoscience, specifically medicine, just like your association with it.

As far as I can tell from on the usage of based I've seen, it means cringe/unpleasant/racist (depending on context).

Wikipedia is not a dictionary. It mentions that homeopathy is a pseudoscience because it would be a glaring omission for an encyclopedia if it didn’t. Homeopathy is a medical system that works as I described above, and it just so happens that it’s totally junk as well. Its usage in the context of those that practice homeopathy is not the definition that describes it as being bunk.

Similarly, “based” is used to mean the opposite of “cringe”. It just so happens that most “based” content is what others might call cringe; the video I posted above is satire of exactly this. However, it doesn’t change the meaning of the word, and in fact the joke falls apart if you redefine it this way.

I don't know. You cited a youtube clip with usage of a word as a definition of a word, which I accept, actually, as an interesting and useful source. But you deny the wikipedia language I quoted as acceptable input to this conversation? Why is your youtube context more right than my wikipedia context?

Words have multiple meanings. Clearly based is one of them.

I'm surprised nobody's said it, but your posts in this thread have been pretty cringe and bluepilled

If someone calls a "cringe/unpleasant/racist" thing "cool", then does that mean that one of the meaning of the word "cool" is something "cringe/unpleasant/racist"?

I cited it as usage of the word in context, not as a definition. I rejected your Wikipedia link because it was not an example of usage, but rather an explanation of what the thing is rather than its definition (I would expect a Wikipedia article on "based", if there ever was one, to mention that it's associated with the far right, etc. Words do have multiple meanings, but those meanings grow organically from their usage; you can't just come along and say "I associate this word with xyz therefore it means xyz". That's just how you feel about the word.

> As far as I can tell from on the usage of based I've seen, it means cringe/unpleasant/racist (depending on context).

Again, you need to separate your feelings about the things being described as “based” with the meaning intended by the people using the word. If I hate hippies and think anything they call “groovy” is really ugly and uncool, that doesn’t mean I get to just declare that “groovy means ugly and uncool”. That’s what you’re doing.

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