off the bat

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English

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Etymology

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From cricket, baseball, and other sports where a bat is used to strike a ball and the players have to make an immediate decision where to run and what plays to make after a successful strike.

Pronunciation

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Prepositional phrase

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off the bat

  1. (US, idiomatic) From the start; immediately; right away.
    hot off the bat   straight off the bat
    I didn't see anything wrong, off the bat.
    • 2023 November 29, Richard Foster, “Tyne & Wear Metro goes with the flow”, in RAIL, number 997, page 35:
      "We're not going to uplift the frequency until we've got the new trains. But what we've seen straight off the bat has been a big winner for our customers."

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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