What is ‘based’ based on?
‘Is it connected to plant-based?’ asked my husband, as though we were playing Twenty Questions. ‘Anything to do with Homebase, drum and bass, Prisoners’ Base?’ 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
