Batsman

How to spell batsman

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce batsman

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does batsman mean?

1. nounIn cricket, the player who is taking a turn to strike the ball with the bat.

Batsman in a sentence

• The opening batsman scored a century before lunch.

• A confident batsman stepped onto the pitch to face the fast bowler.

Where does batsman come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a straightforward English compound, joining 'bat' and 'man' with a linking 's'. The word 'bat' here means the wooden implement used to strike a ball, and it descends from Old English 'batt', meaning a cudgel or stick, a word that may have been reinforced by the Old French 'batte', a beating club from 'battre', 'to beat'. The element 'man' is purely native, coming from Old English 'mann', meaning a human being or person. The combined term emerged in the context of English cricket in the eighteenth century to name the player whose turn it is to wield the bat. The spelling trap is the buried 's' that links the two halves: it sounds like 'bats' but is written as a single solid word, and the unstressed 'man' ending quietly reduces to a schwa in speech.

How the word is built

• bat (cricket bat)
• -s- (linking s)
• man (person)