bat

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A stout wooden stick; a cudgel.
2. n. A blow, such as one delivered with a stick.
3. n. Baseball A rounded, often wooden club, wider and heavier at the hitting end and tapering at the handle, used to strike the ball.
4. n. Sports A club used in cricket, having a broad, flat-surfaced hitting end and a distinct, narrow handle.
5. n. Sports The racket used in various games, such as table tennis or racquets.
6. v. To hit with or as if with a bat.
7. v. Baseball To cause (a run) to be scored while at bat: batted the winning run in with a double.
8. v. Baseball To have (a certain percentage) as a batting average.
9. v. Informal To discuss or consider at length: bat an idea around.
10. v. Baseball To use a bat.
11. v. Baseball To have a turn at bat.
12. v. Slang To wander about aimlessly.
13. bat out Informal To produce in a hurried or informal manner: batted out thank-you notes all morning.
14. idiom. at bat Sports Taking one's turn to bat, as in baseball or cricket.
15. idiom. go to bat for To give assistance to; defend.
16. idiom. off the bat Without hesitation; immediately: They responded right off the bat.
17. n. Any of various nocturnal flying mammals of the order Chiroptera, having membranous wings that extend from the forelimbs to the hind limbs or tail and anatomical adaptations for echolocation, by which they navigate and hunt prey.
18. idiom. have bats in (one's) belfry To behave in an eccentric, bizarre manner.
19. v. To wink or flutter: bat one's eyelashes.
20. idiom. not bat an eye Informal To show no emotion; appear unaffected: The reporter didn't bat an eyelash while reading the gruesome news.
21. n. Slang A binge; a spree.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A heavy stick or club; formerly, a walking-stick.
2. n. The wooden club with which the players in base-ball, cricket, and similar games bat or drive the ball. That used in base-ball is a round tapering stick of varying size and weight to suit the strength of the player; that used in cricket is shaped somewhat like the broad end of an oar, and is provided with a round handle.
3. n. A batsman or batter.
4. n. A blow as with a bat or baton: as, he received a bat in the face.
5. n. A tool made of beech, used by plumbers in dressing and flatting sheet-lead.
6. n. A rammer used by founders.
7. n. A blade used for beating or scutching hemp or flax.
8. n. A piece of brick having one end entire; hence, any portion of a brick; a brickbat.
9. n. A kind of sun-dried brick.
10. n. Shale; hardened clay, but not fire-clay: same as bind, 2. Also spelled batt.
11. n. In hat-making, a felted mass of fur, or of hair and wool. Two such masses are required to form the body of a hat. Also spelled batt.
12. n. A continuous wad of cotton from the batting-machine, ready for carding; also, a sheet of cotton wadding or batting. See batting.
13. n. In ceramics: A flexible sheet of gelatin used in transferring impressions to the biscuit.
14. n. A shelf or slab of baked clay used to support pieces of biscuit which have been painted, and are being fired again. See enamel-kiln.
15. n. Rate; speed; style.
16. To beat; hit; strike. Especially— In base-ball and similar games, to knock or drive, as the ball.
17. In base-ball and similar games, to strike the ball: as, he bats well.
18. n. A wing-handed, wing-footed flying mammal, of the order Chiroptera (which see). The species are upward of 450 in number, nearly cosmopolitan, but largest, most varied in character, and most abundant in individuals in tropical and subtropical countries. The species of temperate countries, as of the United States and Europe, are comparatively few, small, and of such uniform characters that they give little idea of the extent and diversity of the order in warmer regions. Bats are the most aėrial or volitant of all animals, even more so than birds or insects, for they have scarcely any other means of locomotion than flying. They are nocturnal and crepuscular, passing most of the daytime in dusky retreats, where they gather sometimes in almost incredible multitudes, and generally repose hanging head downward by their hind feet. In size they range from less than the size of a mouse to large forms with some five feet spread of wing. The body is usually softly furry; the wings are membranous and naked. The great majority are insectivorous and carnivorous, and constitute the suborder Animalivora or Insectivora; of these, a few prey upon other bats, and some, of the genera Desmodus and Diphylla, suck the blood of large animals; but the great bats of South America called vampires are chiefly frugivorous. See Desmodontes, Vampyri. The old-world fruit-bats, flying-foxes, or roussettes are mostly large species, constituting the family Pteropodidæ and suborder Frugivora. See cut under flying-fox. The physiognomy of many of the bats is grotesque, owing to the extraordinary appendages of the snout, especially in the families Rhinolophidæ and Phyllostomatidæ, or horseshoe bats and leaf-nosed bats. The ears, too, are often of great size and much complexity of detail, and, like the various appendages of the face, and the wing-membranes themselves, serve as tactile organs of extreme delicacy, even to the extent of sensing objects without actual contact. The wings of bats are commonly given to representations of evil genii and demons, as those of birds are attached to good angels. The large bat represented on Egyptian monuments is one of the fruit-bats, the Cynonycteris ægyptiaca. The Hebrew name of the bat of the Old Testament, atalleph, is now used in the form Atalapha for a genus of American bats. The commonest species of the United States are the small brown bat, Vespertilio subulatus, and the red bat, Lasiurus noveboracensis. Among European species may be noted the serotine (Vespertilio serotinus), the pipistrelle (V. pipistrellus), the barbastel (Barbastellus communis), the oreillard (Plecotus auritus), and the horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus hipposideros and R. ferroequinum). In heraldry the bat is always represented displayed, that is, with the wings opened, and is often called by its older name reremouse.
19. To bate or flutter, as in the phrase to bat the eyes, that is, wink.
20. n. A pack-saddle: only in composition, as bathorse, batman, etc.
21. n. See batz.
22. n. Same as tical.
23. n. A measure of land formerly used in South Wales; a perch of 11 feet square.
24. n. Same as bath.
25. n. A paddle or blade in a coal-pulverizer. These bats are carried on rapidly rotating arms, and break the coal into very fine particles.
26. n. plural Heavy laced boots with hobnails.
27. n. Low-cut laced shoes formerly worn by women.
28. n. Boots in bad repair.
29. n. A Siamese silver coin, the same as the tical.

Wiktionary

1. n. Any of the small, nocturnal, flying mammals of the order Chiroptera, which navigate by means of echolocation. They look like a mouse with membranous wings extending from the forelimbs to the hind limbs or tail. Altogether, there are about 1,000 bat species in the world.
2. n. offensive An old woman.
3. n. obsolete, slang A low whore: so called from moving out like a bat in the dusk of the evening.
4. n. A club made of wood or aluminium used for striking the ball in sports such as baseball, softball and cricket.
5. n. A turn at hitting the ball with a bat in a game.
6. n. two-up : The piece of wood on which the spinner places the coins and then uses for throwing them. (Reference: Sidney J. Baker, The Australian Language, second edition, 1966, chapter XI section 3, page 242.)
7. v. transitive to hit with a bat.
8. v. intransitive to take a turn at hitting a ball with a bat in sports like cricket, baseball and softball, as opposed to fielding.
9. v. intransitive to strike or swipe as though with a bat
10. v. transitive to flutter: bat one's eyelashes.
11. n. obsolete packsaddle

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A large stick; a club; specifically, a piece of wood with one end thicker or broader than the other, used in playing baseball, cricket, etc.
2. n. In badminton, tennis, and similar games, a racket.
3. n. A sheet of cotton used for filling quilts or comfortables; batting.
4. n. A part of a brick with one whole end; a brickbat.
5. n. (Mining) Shale or bituminous shale.
6. n. Colloq. or Slang A stroke; a sharp blow.
7. n. Scot. & Prov. Eng. A stroke of work.
8. n. colloq. Rate of motion; speed.
9. n. Slang, U. S. A spree; a jollification.
10. n. Scot. & Prov. Eng. Manner; rate; condition; state of health.
11. v. To strike or hit with a bat or a pole; to cudgel; to beat.
12. v. To use a bat, as in a game of baseball; when used with a numerical postmodifier it indicates a baseball player's performance (as a decimal) at bat.
13. v. Obs. or Prov. Eng. To bate or flutter, as a hawk.
14. v. Local, U. S. & Prov Eng. To wink.
15. n. (Zoöl.) One of the Chiroptera, an order of flying mammals, in which the wings are formed by a membrane stretched between the elongated fingers, legs, and tail. The common bats are small and insectivorous. See chiroptera and vampire.
16. n. Same as tical, n., 1.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a small racket with a long handle used for playing squash
2. n. nocturnal mouselike mammal with forelimbs modified to form membranous wings and anatomical adaptations for echolocation by which they navigate
3. v. have a turn at bat
4. n. (baseball) a turn trying to get a hit
5. n. the club used in playing cricket
6. v. use a bat
7. n. a club used for hitting a ball in various games
8. v. beat thoroughly and conclusively in a competition or fight
9. v. wink briefly
10. v. strike with, or as if with a baseball bat