Source : Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Basic \Ba"sic\, a.
   1. (Chem.)
      (a) Relating to a base; performing the office of a base in
          a salt.
      (b) Having the base in excess, or the amount of the base
          atomically greater than that of the acid, or exceeding
          in proportion that of the related neutral salt.
      (c) Apparently alkaline, as certain normal salts which
          exhibit alkaline reactions with test paper.

   2. (Min.) Said of crystalline rocks which contain a
      relatively low percentage of silica, as basalt.

   {Basic salt} (Chem.), a salt formed from a base or hydroxide
      by the partial replacement of its hydrogen by a negative
      or acid element or radical.

Source : WordNet®

BASIC
     n 1: a popular programming language that is relatively easy to
          learn; an acronym for beginner's all-purpose symbolic
          instruction code; no longer in general use
     2: (usually plural) a necessary commodity for which demand is
        constant [syn: {staple}]

Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

BASIC
     
         Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.
        A simple language oroginally designed for ease of programming
        by students and beginners.
     
        BASIC exists in many dialects, and is popular on
        {microcomputers} with sound and graphics support.  Most micro
        versions are {interactive} and {interpreted}.
     
        BASIC has become the leading cause of brain-damage in
        proto-hackers.  This is another case (like {Pascal}) of the
        cascading lossage that happens when a language deliberately
        designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously.  A
        novice can write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10-20
        lines) very easily; writing anything longer is (a) very
        painful, and (b) encourages bad habits that will make it
        harder to use more powerful languages well.  This wouldn't be
        so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so common on
        low-end micros.  As it is, it ruins thousands of potential
        wizards a year.
     
        Originally, all references to code, both {GOTO} and GOSUB
        (subroutine call) referred to the destination by its line
        number.  This allowed for very simple editing in the days
        before {text editors} were considered essential.  Just typing
        the line number deleted the line and to edit a line you just
        typed the new line with the same number.  Programs were
        typically numbered in steps of ten to allow for insertions.
        Later versions, such as {BASIC V}, allow {GOTO}-less
        {structured programming} with named {procedures} and
        {functions}, IF-THEN-ELSE-ENDIF constructs and {WHILE} loops
        etc.
     
        Early BASICs had no graphic operations except with graphic
        characters.  In the 1970s BASIC {interpreters} became standard
        features in {mainframes} and {minicomputers}.  Some versions
        included {matrix} operations as language {primitives}.
     
        A {public domain} {interpreter} for a mixture of {DEC}'s
        {MU-Basic} and {Microsoft Basic} is {here
        (ftp://oak.oakland.edu/pub/Unix-c/languages/basic/basic.tar-z)}.
        A {yacc} {parser} and {interpreter} were in the
        comp.sources.unix archives volume 2.
     
        See also {ANSI Minimal BASIC}, {bournebasic}, {bwBASIC},
        {ubasic}, {Visual Basic}.
     
        [{Jargon File}]
     
        (1995-03-15)