/ bæt; NAmE / noun , verb
■ noun
1.
a piece of wood with a handle, made in various shapes and sizes, and used for hitting the ball in games such as baseball , cricket and table tennis :
a baseball / cricket bat
—compare racket
2.
an animal like a mouse with wings, that flies and feeds at night (= it is nocturnal ). There are many types of bat.
—see also fruit bat , old bat , vampire bat
•
IDIOMS
- like a bat out of hell
- off your own bat
—more at blind adjective , right adverb
■ verb
( -tt- ) to hit a ball with a bat, especially in a game of cricket or baseball :
[ v ]
He bats very well.
Who's batting first for the Orioles?
[also vn ]
•
IDIOMS
- bat your eyes / eyelashes
- bat a thousand
- go to bat for sb
- not bat an eyelid
•
PHRASAL VERBS
- bat sth around
••
WORD ORIGIN
noun sense 1 and verb late Old English batt club, stick, staff , perhaps partly from Old French batte , from battre to strike.
noun sense 2 late 16th cent.: alteration, perhaps by association with medieval Latin batta , blacta , of Middle English bakke , of Scandinavian origin.
bat your eyes / eyelashes, not bat an eyelid. late 19th cent. (originally US): from dialect and US bat to wink, blink , variant of obsolete bate to flutter .