I could have sworn I’d heard this word used in statements sarcasticly saying someone was highly regarded in some area. One of my guy friends that sleeps with quite a few women was saying he wasn’t interested in a woman because he thought she was slutty, and I told him “Yeah, I’m sure you’re the bastian of the abstinent community”, and he didn’t know what the shit I was talking about. I looked up the word on dictionary.com, and no dice. Looked it up on urbandictionary, and no dice. What’s the deal? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!
You spelt it wrong. O not A.
You want “bastion.”
The relevant part in that: “The last bastion of academic standards.” A stronghold.
This seems like something of a drawback to web-based dictionaries, doesn’t it? If you’d looked up the word in the dead-tree version, you’d have found the correct spelling and definition straight away. Yet on-line dictionaries just leave you with nothing. Even google can’t help: often, if you’ve misspelled the word you’re searching on, it comes up with a helpful (or patronising) “Did you mean…” comment, but Bastian is a common enough name to provide plenty of hits.
Is there an on-line dictionary that offers suggestions for alternative “near miss” spellings? After all, half the time you’re looking a word up is because you’re unsure of the spelling.
RhymeZone has a spelling function.
For “bastian” it wasn’t until I clicked “same consonants” did I get a link to “bastion,” but it was there.
I typed bastian into a Word 2000 document and spell-checked it. Word suggested bastion, abstain, and bastions. I’ve found Word extremely useful a great many times when I’m unsure of the spelling of something.
Now that I’ve started this message, I noticed that Firefox 2.0.0.1 objects to bastian (it puts a red dotted line under it). Guess what word it suggests if I right-click it?
dictionary.com does that - except in this case it didn’t, because there is actually a valid entry for Bastian. It only suggests alternatives if it finds no results.
Merriam-Webster on-line bastian not found with 11 suggestions, bastion being the first.
For “bast*n”, four suggestions, bastion is the third.
I’m sure the M-W is not the only intelligent on-line dictionary, but it is the one with which I am most familiar.
(The real drawback to on-line dictionaries is that you don’t get the enjoyment of spending two or three hours each day perusing the words you were not looking up that just happened to be on the same page.)
What if he thought it was spelled “pastion”? No amount of dead trees would have helped.
<swoon>
.
Am I the only one running through The Neverending Story in my head?
Bastian! Call my name!
‘Bastian’ can also be used as such:
“The violence in that movie was really gratuitous. Like the scene where the killer was bastian the girl’s head in? Oh how gross.”
I’ve seen it used as an abbreviation of, ahem, Sebastian.
Yes, but only because in our example, the correct (bastion) and incorrect (bastian) spellings have the same first five letters. This virtually guarantees that when you open your dead-tree dictionary to look up “bastian”, you’ll end up on the same page as “bastion” and you’ll figure out your mistake. But if the spelling error is in the first letter or two, the dead-tree dictionary will be of no help whatsoever.
Bastian - he’s the one who’s out sick when you get a Sebastian.
Now that we’ve settled the matter of the existence of the word, I don’t know what the shit you’re talking about either. 
Maybe we should move from the spelling on to the definition.