Innings

How to spell innings

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce innings

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does innings mean?

1. nounA team's or a single batsman's turn at batting in cricket, which keeps the final 's' even in the singular.
2. nounThe plural of inning, the divisions of play in baseball during which each team bats.
3. nounA person's span of life or active career, as in the phrase 'a good innings'.

Innings in a sentence

• The captain declared after a long opening innings.

• The pitcher held the lead through nine tense innings.

• At ninety-five he had enjoyed a good innings.

• Her patient innings at the crease saved the match.

• The rookie struggled in the early innings of the game.

• After forty years on the bench, the judge admitted he had had a fine innings.

Where does innings come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word grows from the Old English noun 'innung', which meant a putting in or a getting in, formed from the verb 'innian', 'to get within or put inside', itself built on the everyday word 'in'. By the 1700s it had settled in cricket to describe a side's or a batsman's turn 'in' at the wicket, that is, their period of being in to bat. A curious feature is that in cricket the form 'innings' carries the final 's' even when only one turn is meant, so a single player still has an 'innings', and this is precisely the spelling trap for anyone who expects a singular without the 's'. Baseball later borrowed the idea but trimmed it back to 'inning' for one division of play, keeping 'innings' only as the true plural. The figurative phrase 'a good innings', used of a long life or career, preserves the older cricketing sense.

How the word is built

• in (within)
• -ing (noun of action)
• -s (here part of the fixed singular/plural form)