Basic means forming the simplest and most necessary part. Basic skills, a basic model, basic needs.
As praise it means essential and as criticism it means bare — a basic hotel room is a complaint. In recent slang, calling a person basic means unoriginal, which is a new and unkind use. In chemistry, basic means alkaline. Note base, and the plural basics.
1adjectivebasicForming the simplest and most necessary part.
“Food, clean water and shelter are basic human needs.”
2adjectivealkalineAlkaline, in chemistry.
“Basic at roughly pH nine.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
basic is a quality of simplicity.
From base + -ic.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA