basic
     adj 1: pertaining to or constituting a base or basis; "a basic
            fact"; "the basic ingredients"; "basic changes in
            public opinion occur because of changes in priorities"
            [ant: {incidental}]
     2: reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible
        without loss of generality; "a basic story line"; "a
        canonical syllable pattern" [syn: {canonic}, {canonical}]
     3: of primary importance; "basic truths" [syn: {basal}, {primary}]
     4: serving as a base or starting point; "a basic course in
        Russian"; "basic training for raw recruits"; "a set of
        basic tools"; "an introductory art course" [syn: {introductory}]
     5: of or denoting or of the nature of or containing a base
     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: WordNet® 2.0

BASIC /bay'-sic/ n. A programming language, originally designed for
   Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which
   for many years was the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers.
   Edsger W. Dijkstra observed in "Selected Writings on Computing: A
   Personal Perspective" that "It is practically impossible to teach good
   programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as
   potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of
   regeneration." 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 (a) is 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 in
   the 1980s. As it is, it probably ruined tens of thousands of potential
   wizards.

   [1995: Some languages called `BASIC' aren't quite this nasty any more,
   having acquired Pascal- and C-like procedures and control structures and
   shed their line numbers. --ESR]

   BASIC stands for "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code".
   Earlier versions of this entry claiming this was a later {backronym}
   were incorrect.


Source: The Jargon File

BASIC
     Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
     
     
Source: Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms