This week we’ll look into four idioms which share a common origin: baseball. These are most prominently used in American English, although they have spread to other varieties of English mostly through cultural osmosis. The prominence of these idioms in American English makes a lot of sense considering baseball – colloquially known as “America’s pastime” – primarily originated in the United States. As we have pointed out before, idioms are often characterized by their lack of transparency in meaning and baseball idioms are in many cases no exception if you don’t have a basic knowledge of the game’s rules and the terminology around it and if you have never encountered these expressions before.
Since there is a considerable number of these idioms, we’ve picked three to briefly explain the meaning behind them and an example sentence for each so that you know how they’re used.
1. Off base
This idiom can be taken in two separate ways and both seem to be equally common in usage and it’s used as both an adverb and an adjective. In the first case, to be caught off base is used to mean that someone is surprised by an unexpected event. The second, way off base is used when someone is misguided or working under wrong assumptions. In baseball, when a batter is caught away from a base, they are vulnerable to being put out of the game.
a. I was caught completely off base when he made those comments
b. Your comments to him were way off base and you should definitely apologize.
2. Right off the bat
This expression is used to mean something is immediate. A play in a baseball game begins right when the ball is hit by the batter.
You could tell right off the bat that this was going to be a tedious text to get through by looking at the unclear language the author chose to use.
3. Softball
This one is often used in the context of journalism – softball questions are purposefully easy to answer for the benefit of the interviewee. This meaning doesn’t necessarily follow the term softballing in baseball which refers to a pitcher using slow throws of the ball against an opponent to cause them to make mistakes. A good example sentence appears in the OED which was taken from a New York Times article:
Perhaps I was pandering, perhaps I was softballing him with the questions, as some people say.
Do you know any other interesting idioms? Share your own in the comments below or ask for our research on the origins!
Also, here you can test out your knowledge in our quiz on English idioms and sayings!
