Ballpark

How to spell ballpark

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce ballpark

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ballpark mean?

1. adjectiveRoughly accurate; approximate rather than exact.
2. verbTo estimate something roughly.
3. nounAn outdoor stadium where baseball is played.

Ballpark in a sentence

• adjective

  The builder gave us a ballpark figure for the kitchen renovation.

• verb

  The manager asked the team to ballpark how long the project would take.

• noun

  The family arrived at the ballpark an hour before the first pitch.

• adjective

  A ballpark estimate is enough for now; we can refine it later.

• verb

  The accountant tried to ballpark the annual costs before the meeting.

• noun

  Vendors sold hot dogs throughout the ballpark all afternoon.

Where does ballpark come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent American compound, simply joining 'ball' and 'park'. The word 'ball' descends from Old Norse 'bollr' and the Germanic root for a round object, while 'park' came into English through Old French 'parc', an enclosed tract of land, ultimately from Medieval Latin 'parricus' meaning an enclosure. Joined together in the United States in the 1890s, a 'ballpark' literally meant the fenced ground where baseball was played. The figurative uses are much younger: by the mid twentieth century an estimate was said to be 'in the ballpark' if it landed somewhere within the broad boundaries of the right answer, much as a hit ball stays inside the park. From that came the familiar 'ballpark figure', a rough approximate number, which spread well beyond baseball into ordinary business and household talk.

How the word is built

• ball (sphere used in games)
• park (enclosed ground)