hitting average
- noun
- Specialized
- The player's hitting average was .320, making him one of the best batters in the league.
Examples
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- Well, what's your hitting average these days, Sven?
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Sven's remarkable hitting average this season has impressed the coaches and fans alike.
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After working with the coach on his technique, his hitting average improved significantly over the summer.
Synonyms
The number of hits a batter gets divided by how many times they officially bat
Surface Forms
Morphology
The term combines 'hitting' (occurrences of strikes/hits) with 'average' (a mean), so a learner who knows both words can infer it refers to an average related to hitting — essentially how often someone gets hits. However, the precise baseball meaning (hits divided by official at-bats) and the technical sense of 'hit' in this sport require domain knowledge, so the relation is not fully predictable for a general B1 learner.
Etymology
Hitting average comes from early baseball scorekeepers who counted how often a batter had hits (the hitting) and then divided that number by the times the batter went to bat to get an average. So it literally shows 'how often a player gets a hit', and that is why we use it to see how good a batter is.