"in the ballpark" meaning in English

See in the ballpark in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Prepositional phrase

Etymology: An early source is the 1945 book Memoirs of a Shy Photographer by Kenneth Patchen: 1945, Kenneth Patchen, Memoirs Of a Shy Photographer, New Directions: "You're out in left field." "And you're out of the ballpark!"
In context, the first speaker is suggesting the listener's perspective is fringe; which may also be the origin of the idiom "out in left field." The response keeps the baseball metaphor, and suggests the first speaker is even further fringe than themselves. In 1950, a scientific paper related to the US atomic program and/or ballistic missile development decides on a range the area of a standard baseball park as an "on target" area for a desired missile landing. Thus, a missile that lands "in the ballpark" was considered sufficiently accurate (for nuclear weapons at least). Later, in the 1960s, the term "ballpark" would be repurposed for the name of the desired landing zone for de-orbiting satellites.
Etymology templates: {{quote-book|en|author=w:Kenneth Patchen|publisher=New Directions|text="You're out in left field." "And you're out of the ballpark!"|title=Memoirs Of a Shy Photographer|year=1945}} 1945, Kenneth Patchen, Memoirs Of a Shy Photographer, New Directions: "You're out in left field." "And you're out of the ballpark!" Head templates: {{head|en|prepositional phrase|head=}} in the ballpark, {{en-PP}} in the ballpark
  1. (figuratively) In the same general vicinity (as); somewhat similar (to); typically construed with of. Tags: figuratively

Download JSON data for in the ballpark meaning in English (2.6kB)

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        "author": "w:Kenneth Patchen",
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        "text": "\"You're out in left field.\" \"And you're out of the ballpark!\"",
        "title": "Memoirs Of a Shy Photographer",
        "year": "1945"
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      "name": "quote-book"
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  "etymology_text": "An early source is the 1945 book Memoirs of a Shy Photographer by Kenneth Patchen:\n1945, Kenneth Patchen, Memoirs Of a Shy Photographer, New Directions:\n\"You're out in left field.\" \"And you're out of the ballpark!\"\n\nIn context, the first speaker is suggesting the listener's perspective is fringe; which may also be the origin of the idiom \"out in left field.\" The response keeps the baseball metaphor, and suggests the first speaker is even further fringe than themselves.\nIn 1950, a scientific paper related to the US atomic program and/or ballistic missile development decides on a range the area of a standard baseball park as an \"on target\" area for a desired missile landing. Thus, a missile that lands \"in the ballpark\" was considered sufficiently accurate (for nuclear weapons at least).\nLater, in the 1960s, the term \"ballpark\" would be repurposed for the name of the desired landing zone for de-orbiting satellites.",
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        "In the same general vicinity (as); somewhat similar (to); typically construed with of."
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        "(figuratively) In the same general vicinity (as); somewhat similar (to); typically construed with of."
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}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
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        "title": "Memoirs Of a Shy Photographer",
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  "etymology_text": "An early source is the 1945 book Memoirs of a Shy Photographer by Kenneth Patchen:\n1945, Kenneth Patchen, Memoirs Of a Shy Photographer, New Directions:\n\"You're out in left field.\" \"And you're out of the ballpark!\"\n\nIn context, the first speaker is suggesting the listener's perspective is fringe; which may also be the origin of the idiom \"out in left field.\" The response keeps the baseball metaphor, and suggests the first speaker is even further fringe than themselves.\nIn 1950, a scientific paper related to the US atomic program and/or ballistic missile development decides on a range the area of a standard baseball park as an \"on target\" area for a desired missile landing. Thus, a missile that lands \"in the ballpark\" was considered sufficiently accurate (for nuclear weapons at least).\nLater, in the 1960s, the term \"ballpark\" would be repurposed for the name of the desired landing zone for de-orbiting satellites.",
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        "English prepositional phrases",
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        "English terms with quotations"
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      "glosses": [
        "In the same general vicinity (as); somewhat similar (to); typically construed with of."
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        "(figuratively) In the same general vicinity (as); somewhat similar (to); typically construed with of."
      ],
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        "figuratively"
      ]
    }
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  "word": "in the ballpark"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-20 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (1d5a7d1 and 304864d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.