Bullpen

How to spell bullpen

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bullpen

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bullpen mean?

1. nounThe area of a baseball field where relief pitchers warm up, or the group of relief pitchers itself.
2. nounAn open shared work area where staff sit together without separate offices.
3. nounA fenced enclosure for holding a bull or other livestock.
4. nounA large communal cell where prisoners are held temporarily, especially before a court appearance.

Bullpen in a sentence

• The manager signalled to the bullpen for a fresh pitcher.

• The junior analysts all work in the bullpen near the windows.

• The farmer led the heavy animal back into the bullpen.

• The defendants waited together in the bullpen before the hearing.

• Their bullpen has been unreliable late in close games.

• The firm replaced its private offices with one large bullpen.

Where does bullpen come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound built from two old native words: bull, the male of cattle, and pen, an enclosure for animals that descends from the Old English penn meaning a fold or small pound for livestock. Joined together, bullpen first meant exactly what its parts suggest, a sturdy pen for holding bulls. In nineteenth-century American slang it shifted to mean a barred enclosure for prisoners, a sense still alive in the legal phrase for a holding cell. By the early twentieth century baseball borrowed it for the fenced area where relief pitchers warm up, and from there it spread to the modern office sense of an open shared work area. Because both halves are ordinary words, the only spelling caution is remembering it is written solid as one word, with the single l-l of bull butting straight against the p of pen.

How the word is built

• bull (male bovine)
• pen (enclosure, from Old English penn 'fold, enclosure')