Stan Musial

3 6.2

An American baseball player known as one of the best hitters who played for the St Louis Cardinals

proper noun
/stæŋ ˈmjuːziəl/

: Stan Musial

Many fans consider Stan Musial one of the best hitters in baseball history.

Examples

Stan Musial played his entire major league career with the St. Louis Cardinals.
The legacy of Stan Musial continues to inspire young athletes today.
Many consider Stan Musial to be one of the best hitters ever.
Did you know Stan Musial played his entire career with the Cardinals?
My grandfather always talked about how he admired Stan Musial for his incredible batting skills and sportsmanship.
In 2010, a documentary was released that highlighted the legendary career of Stan Musial as one of baseball's all-time greats.
Many young baseball players idolize Stan Musial as a perfect example of hard work and dedication to the sport.

Surface Forms

Stan Musial main

Morphology

Stan + Musial

This is a personal name (proper noun) whose referent (a famous baseball player) cannot be inferred from the literal meanings of the constituent tokens; the parts do not carry compositional semantic content that signals 'baseball player' or biographical information. Proper names are arbitrary labels cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the word-forms would not be able to derive the MWE meaning without prior exposure.

Etymology

Stan Musial became famous in baseball when fans nicknamed him 'Stan the Man' because he was calm and always got hits. Imagine a reliable hitter who always helped his team, and you can see why his name now stands for a 'great hitter'.