What are base currency and quote currency?

[Shing1985]

The currency before slash (/) is called base currency and the currency after slash (/) is called quote currency.

 

[Electric Rainbow]

In forex, the base currency represents how much of the quote currency is needed for you to get one unit of the base currency. For example, if you were looking at the CAD/USD currency pair, the Canadian dollar would be the base currency and the U.S. dollar would be the quote currency.

 

[maby84]

You have got a currency pair - the first currency is the base currency and the second one [the one behind the slash] is the quote currency, so you are going to see how much of the quote currency you will be getting for one unit of the other currency.