[Ads-l] Antedating of "Ballpark" (Adjective)

Shapiro, Fred fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Sun Mar 23 12:09:49 UTC 2025


ballpark, adj. (OED 1960)

“Pentagon language continues to produce new bafflers. One of them is ‘a ballpark figure,’ meaning a very rough estimate which doesn’t do much more than indicate that a given program is going to cost someone an awful lot of money.” The Des Moines Register, June 24, 1957, p16

NOTE: This antedating was found by Ken Liss.

Fred Shapiro



------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org


More information about the Ads-l mailing list