minor-league club
- noun
- /ˈmaɪnər liɡ klʌb/
- US
- After trying out for several teams, she finally joined a minor-league club where she could develop her skills.
Examples
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We're a minor league club.
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But they're also a number of minor league clubs that play in areas that really need help even more than those cities.
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The local minor-league club offers affordable tickets for families to enjoy an evening of baseball.
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The minor-league club plays an important role in nurturing new talent for the major leagues.
Synonyms
A sports team that plays in a lower-level league below the major leagues
Antonyms
How High-Level
Surface Forms
Morphology
minor-league + club
The meaning is directly compositional: 'minor' (lower in rank/status) + 'league' (a sports division) forms the compound adjective 'minor-league' which modifies 'club' (a team), yielding 'a team that competes in a lower-level league.' This is a transparent, cross-linguistically common formation, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words will readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Minor-league club comes from sports where minor means lower or smaller, a league is a group of teams, and a club is a team. Think of a small team training and playing under the big teams, so it means a team that plays below the 'major' teams.