bat1
/bat
/- Well, it turns out nobody officially tests balls hit by aluminum bats under game conditions.
- There is no evidence of an ancestor of Billiards prior to this time, unless you do lower your criteria to count all the other games played with bats, balls and skittles.
- He generates the best bat speed in the game and hits balls harder than any other batter.
- Ironically, in our innings we only called upon three of our bats.
- But we didn't start well with the bat, and there wasn't enough hardness in the middle order.
- Schenke is an opening left-handed bat and right arm medium pace bowler from Sydney's Balmain Club.
- He was as solid as his father and as stolid as his uncle Sadiq: an opening bat who could bowl a useful off-break.
- Does any other team have opening bats who spend more of their time swishing at flies outside the off stump?
- This being secure, the wings are leveled by the crew, one crew on the wing, one to hold the tail down (keep the skid off the runway) and one to operate the signal bat, which signals the tow vehicle.
- All of the manuals reviewed as part of the investigation stated that marshalling bats should be used to minimise the risk of misinterpretation.
- Simply lift up and the bat will come off the wheel-head without any struggle.
- Put the bat, bat side up on a banding wheel and cut off excessive foam with the electric knife.
- We almost got out of the inning on our own, but mercifully, the other team had batted through the lineup, which meant it was our turn to bat.
- Frankly, the team batted worse than it did in the first innings at Lahore.
- The Indian team batted perfectly, bowled like champions and fielded like tigers.
- There is always something unnerving about the news media going into bat for their own interests; the moral fervour precludes argument.
- And in the past there have been situations where I have had to go into bat for her and defend her when I have brought her out with these friends.
- You talked about there being sketches that you had to really go to bat for.
- Laurie put the small box down on a flat rock and teasingly batted Gil's hand away as he knelt down and tried to reach inside for a sandwich.
- She was beckoning to me, looking around anxiously, and I was batting people out of the way, but as I approached I saw her look up at someone beside her.
- I pushed through them like I was running through some forest batting the tree limbs out of the way.
Phrases
bat a thousand
bat for the other team (or side)
off one's own bat
right off the bat
Phrasal verbs
bat around (or about)
bat something around (or about)
Origin
Late Old English batt 'club, stick, staff', perhaps partly from Old French batte, from battre 'to strike'.
The nocturnal flying mammal was originally not a bat but a ‘back’. The earliest form, adopted in the early Middle Ages from a Scandinavian word, was altered to bat in the 16th century, perhaps influenced by Latin batta or blacta ‘insect that shuns the light’. The creature has inspired numerous expressions. You could be as blind as a bat from the 16th century—before then the standard comparison was with a beetle. From the early 20th century you could have bats in the belfry, ‘be mad’, or, in the same vein, be bats or batty. The first recorded example of like a bat out of hell, ‘very fast and wildly’, is from the Atlanta Constitution of 3 February 1914: ‘One day we saw an automobile go down the street like a bat out of hell and a few moments later we heard that it hit the last car of a freight train at the grade crossing.’ An old-fashioned name for a bat is flittermouse (mid 16th century), meaning literally ‘flying mouse’. Dutch vledermuis and German Fledermaus are matching terms in other languages.
The other bat, for hitting a ball, is a word adopted from French in the Old English period, and is related to battery. If you do something off your own bat you are using a cricketing phrase; it originally referred to the score made by a player's own hits, and so ‘at your own instigation’. But if you did something right off the bat, ‘at the very beginning, straight away’, you would be taking a term from baseball.
Batman has been a comic character and superhero since 1939. The less glamorous batman (mid 18th century) is a British army officer's personal servant. This bat is unrelated to the other two. It came through French from medieval Latin bastum ‘a packsaddle’ (see bastard) and originally referred to a man in charge of a bat-horse, which carried the luggage of military officers.
Rhymes
bat2
/bat/- Order Chiroptera: many families and numerous species. The large tropical fruit bats (suborder Megachiroptera) generally have good eyesight and feed mainly on fruit; the numerous smaller bats (suborder Microchiroptera) are mouse-like in appearance, mainly insectivorous, and use ultrasonic echolocation.
- The placental mammals include such diverse forms as whales, bats, elephants, shrews, and armadillos.
- Nearly a quarter of all mammal species are bats, and they are the only winged animals in the class Mammalia.
- But then the old bat did go on a bit - 30 minutes of complaining after the effect when last night she could have just asked us to quiet down and then have had no cause for complaint.
- So how's about you head over there right this very second and wish the old bat a happy birthday, hmmm?
- Ok, now that I've put that side of her character in perspective, you must be wondering why I like the old bat?
Phrases
have bats in the (or one's) belfry
like a bat out of hell
Origin
Late 16th century: alteration, perhaps by association with medieval Latin batta, blacta, of Middle English bakke, of Scandinavian origin.
bat3
/bat/- She was batting her eyelashes at Rick in an extremely flirtatious manner.
- She batted her eyelashes in the most flirtatious manner she could muster.
- To Todd she spoke more flirtatiously, batting her eyelashes and pressing up against the locker next to his.
Phrases
not bat (or without batting) an eyelid (or eye or eyelash)
Origin
Late 19th century (originally US): from dialect and US bat 'to wink, blink', variant of obsolete bate 'to flutter'.