pine-tar rag
- noun
- /paɪn tɑr ræg/
- Jargon
:
trapo de brea de pino
- The batter reached for the pine-tar rag before stepping up to the plate.
Examples
-
Coaches keep a pine-tar rag in the dugout for players to use during games.
-
He always uses a pine-tar rag to grip his bat better.
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The umpire inspected the pine-tar rag to ensure it met the regulations.
-
Do you have a pine-tar rag I can borrow?
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The player reached for the pine-tar rag to enhance his grip on the bat before stepping up to the plate.
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He always kept a pine-tar rag handy in the dugout for players needing better control of their bats.
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Before his turn to bat, he wiped his hands on the pine-tar rag to ensure a secure hold.
Surface Forms
Morphology
pine-tar + rag
The compound is compositionally interpretable: knowing 'pine' + 'tar' and 'rag' lets a learner infer a rag treated with pine tar (material + object), so the basic referent is predictable from the parts. However, the specialised baseball use (applying it to a bat to improve grip) and the low frequency of the term 'pine tar' in general English require extra cultural/technical knowledge, so the full conventional meaning is not fully derivable.
Etymology
Pine-tar rag is a cloth soaked in sticky pine-tar that players rub on the handle of a baseball bat to stop it slipping. The sticky pine-tar on the rag gives the batter a better 'grip', so the name describes the tool used to hold the bat more easily.
