basic vs pivotal

basic

adj
  • Necessary, essential for life or some process. 

  • Elementary, simple, fundamental, merely functional. 

  • Of or pertaining to a base; having a pH greater than 7. 

  • Unremarkable or uninteresting; boring; uncool. 

noun
  • An elementary building block, e.g. a fundamental piece of knowledge. 

  • A necessary commodity, a staple requirement. 

  • Basic training. 

pivotal

adj
  • Being of crucial importance; central, key. 

  • Of, relating to, or being a pivot. 

How often have the words basic and pivotal occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )