Inning

How to spell inning

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce inning

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does inning mean?

1. nounA division of a baseball game in which each team has a turn to bat and to field.

Inning in a sentence

• The home team scored three runs in the seventh inning.

• The pitcher held the lead through the final inning without giving up a hit.

Where does inning come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows directly from the everyday English preposition 'in', by way of the Old English noun 'innung', which meant a getting in, a putting in, or a taking in. The original verb behind it, 'innian', meant to lodge or to get something within, and farmers once spoke of the 'inning' of crops, meaning the act of gathering the harvest indoors. From that idea of a turn at gathering or taking in, the word drifted toward sport, where it came to mean the period during which one side takes its turn. By the eighteenth century it was firmly attached to bat-and-ball games, and American baseball settled on the singular 'inning' for each turn. The double 'n' is the spelling trap, and it makes sense once you see it as 'in' plus the '-ning' ending rather than as a single smooth syllable.

How the word is built

• in (within)
• -ning (Old English noun ending denoting an action or a 'taking in')