bat

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“
To carry or carry out or bring out one's bat is to ` stay with it, '' outlast the rest '-- the exact nuance depending upon the context.

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Definitions (84)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (21)

  1. noun A stout wooden stick; a cudgel.
  2. noun A blow, such as one delivered with a stick.
  3. noun Baseball A rounded, often wooden club, wider and heavier at the hitting end and tapering at the handle, used to strike the ball.
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Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (38)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (15)

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Examples

  • To carry or carry out or bring out one's bat is to ` stay with it, '' outlast the rest '-- the exact nuance depending upon the context. —  VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol IV No 3
  • To do something off one's own bat is to do it ` on one's own. ' —  VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol IV No 3
  • Today a bat is a bat, not a "mace," "club," "willow," or "stick." —  VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol IV No 1
  • The knowledge of what occurred beyond the walls lay heavily on Ianthe even as the city denied its happening, and the fear that it might move within the walls was in every heart. —  Conan The Triumphant
  • And then it is a real inquiry concerning the nature of a bird or a bat, to make their yet imperfect ideas of it more complete; by examining whether all the simple ideas to which, combined together, they both give the name bird, be all to be found in a bat: but this is a question only of inquirers (not disputers) who neither affirm nor deny, but examine: Or, (2) It is a question between disputants; whereof the one affirms, and the other denies that a bat is a bird. —  God, Aids & Circumcision
 

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Bat has been looked up 424 times, favorited 0 times, listed 24 times, and commented on 4 times.

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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (10)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (4)

  1. Middle English, perhaps partly of Celtic origin and partly from Old French batte, pounding implement, flail (from batre, to beat; see batter1).
  2. Alteration of Middle English bakke, of Scandinavian origin.
  3. Probably a variant of bate2.
  4. Probably from batter, spree.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (6)

  1. from Middle English bat, batte, botte, the earliest recorded forms being dative singular botte, nominative plural botten (nominative singular *bat, *bot?), pointing to an Anglo-Saxon *bat (genitive dative *batte), given by Somner, but not authenticated, apparently from Irish Gaelic bat, bata, a staff, cudgel. But in part at least the word rests on Old French batte, French batte, a rammer, a wand, apparently from battre, beat: see batter. Some of the noun senses are from the verb (see bat, v.), while others are perhaps from orig. different sources.
  2. from late Middle English batten, beat with a stick, from batte, a bat, stick: see bat, n., and cf. batter. In part perhaps regarded as imitative of a heavy, dull blow; cf. pat.
  3. A corruption of earlier back, bak, Scots back, bak (also bakie-bird, bawkie-bird), a bat, from Middle English bakke, backe, from Danish bakke, in comp. aftenbakke, evening-bat, = Old Swedish bakka, in comp. natt-bakka, night-jar, Swedish dial. nattabatta, nattblacka, = Icelandic blaka, in comp. ledhr-blaka, bat, literally leather-flapper, from blaka, flutter, flap. The orig. form is uncertain. Cf. Middle Latin blatta, blacta, batta, a bat, another application of Latin blatta, an insect that shuns the light, a cockroach: see Blatta. For the change of k to t, cf. English make = mate, and English crane = Danish trane, Swedish trana, Icelandic trani. The Anglo-Saxon name of the bat is hrēremūs, later English reremouse. The G. name is fledermaus; cf. English flittermouse.
  4. Variant of bate, prob. now taken in allusion to the eyes of a bat.
  5. from French bât, from Old French bast, a pack-saddle: see bast.
  6. Hindustani bāt, a weight, a measure of weight.
 

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