What does BASIC originally stand for in the name of the programming language?

BASIC originally stood for “Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.”

John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz developed BASIC at Dartmouth College, where the first version ran in 1964. They wanted a language that made computing accessible to students who were not specializing in mathematics or computer science.

The name was deliberately descriptive: BASIC was intended to be approachable, and its commands were designed to resemble ordinary English more closely than the machine-oriented systems common at the time. The language was used with Dartmouth’s time-sharing system, allowing multiple users to interact with a central computer.

BASIC later spread through minicomputers, home computers, and educational software. Many dialects appeared, so programs written for one version were not always fully compatible with another. Despite that variety, the original expansion of the acronym remains the standard historical answer.