baseball
/ˈbeɪs.bɔl/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: 4.54 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A sport common in North America, the Caribbean, and East Asia, in which the objective is to strike a ball so that one of a nine-person team can run counter-clockwise among four bases, resulting in the scoring of a run. The team with the most runs after termination of play, usually nine innings, wins.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "It was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base-ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books."
- "“Your father was the best baseball player anyone had ever seen.” Excited but halting, her voice ran on past all obstacles. “We watched him play shortstop, and my father said he was the best, and my brothers too. The Cardinals sent a man down to talk to him about one of their teams.” Like an ancient marineress, she would not let go. She meant the St. Louis Cardinals’ farm teams."
- "The reason we have for so long been unaware that the universe evolves probabilistically is that for the relatively large, everyday objects we typically encounter -- baseballs, flowerpots, the Moon -- quantum mechanics shows that the probabilities become highly skewed, hugely favoring one outcome and effectively suppressing all others. […] With such a skewed probability, the quantum reasoning goes, we have long overlooked the tiny chance that the baseball can (and, on extraordinarily rare occasions, will) land somewhere completely different."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *gʷem- Proto-Indo-European *-tis Proto-Indo-European *gʷémtis Proto-Hellenic *gʷə́tis Ancient Greek βᾰ́σῐς (bắsĭs)bor. Latin basis Old French basebor. Middle English base English base Proto-Indo-European *bʰel-der. Proto-Germanic *balluz Old English *beall Middle English bal English ball English baseball From base + ball.
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈbeɪs.bɔl/
- British English: /ˈbeɪs.bɔːl/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Sports.