Bas-relief is a way of making pictures in stone, wood, or metal so that the shapes stand up a little from the flat surface, but not far. You can still see the background; the figures look as if they are walking out of the wall, only a bit. That “a bit” is the point: bas is French for low, so this is low relief. High relief (the opposite idea) sticks out much more, sometimes almost like a statue glued to the wall. You find bas-relief on temple walls, old coins, church doors, and public monuments. The word is used as a noun (a bas-relief of horses) and as a kind of adjective (a bas-relief panel). It belongs to art talk and museums, so it feels educated, but the idea is simple: a picture you can also feel with your fingers, raised, not cut deep in. People say it in a French-ish way, roughly “bah-relief.” It is not “base relief” meaning the bottom of something, and the first part is not the fish called bass.