Adopted into online political vernacular during the 2010s; earliest dated marker is 2014
Rise of 'Based' as political internet slang
Event Not yet reviewed This page has not yet been through the automated review pipeline.'Based', reclaimed as a term of approval by rapper Lil B in the late 2000s, is taken up in online political vernacular during the 2010s; the earliest instance the cited dictionaries date is the 2014 'Based Mom' nickname.
Sources
- 01.
Merriam-Webster. based (slang definition). merriam-webster.com returns HTTP 403 to automated clients; read from the recorded capture, whose payload was checked. Traces the reclamation to Lil B, whose 2007 album with The Pack was titled Based Boys, and quotes his 2010 Complex interview turning the earlier 'basehead' sense into a term of approval. On the political sense it says only that the term was 'later taken up ironically in online circles by the alt-right in the 2010s' — decade precision, no year — and illustrates it with the Gamergate-era 'Based Mom' nickname for Christina Hoff Sommers.
- 02.
Dictionary.com Slang Dictionary. based. Records the origin in 'basehead', Lil B's mid-to-late-2000s reclamation, and the political usage. This is the source for the date on this entry: it states that the reinvented term 'was picked up by the alt-right/white nationalist community online in the 2010s' and that 'In 2014, during a controversy over female video-game reviewers known as Gamergate, conservative commentator Christina Hoff Sommers was referred to as Based Mom', with the political sense spreading from there. 2014 is the earliest year either dictionary fixes; neither supports a 2018 date, which this entry previously carried.
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2014
Rise of 'Based' as political internet slang
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