# Palin speech: 'Home run' or 'condescending'?
What's "home run"
It's a baseball term.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_run
When used outside of baseball, it means you've accomplished your goal successfully.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_run
When used outside of baseball, it means you've accomplished your goal successfully.
Actually, "Home run" means that you've been spectacularly successful.
In this case, it means that one speech has transformed her into a combination of Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher, and will ensure a Republican monopoly of political power in the US for the next 50 to 100 years. :)
In this case, it means that one speech has transformed her into a combination of Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher, and will ensure a Republican monopoly of political power in the US for the next 50 to 100 years. :)
Yeah, usually when you hit a baseball with a bat you get the opportunity to run to the next base. There are four bases, and when you have made it to all of them, that's a run, and you score a point. The last base is called "home plate", and it is also where you started from when you were swinging the bat. If you hit a ball so far that you have time to run four bases while the other team is trying to field it, that's a home run. Normally it would take several people at bat to move you through all the bases, but you were able to make it on just one bat, so that's really, really good.
A related phrase for wild success is to "hit it out of the park" -- most baseball fields are bounded by a high back fence, and any ball hit over that fence is very literally out of the reach of the opposite team, and so gets you an automatic home run.
To "field" something -- as a political candidate may be said to be fielding questions from the press -- is to successfully catch and play whatever is being thrown at you, as you would if you were playing a field position (defense) in baseball.
We have a lot of expressions that come from that game! Southpaw, hardhitting, heavy hitter, pinch hitter, batter up, at bat, windup, fastball, curveball, getting to first/second/third base, changeup, throwing a curve, a steal, and swings both ways are all baseball terms that have found their way into general speech, often with highly modified meanings.
A related phrase for wild success is to "hit it out of the park" -- most baseball fields are bounded by a high back fence, and any ball hit over that fence is very literally out of the reach of the opposite team, and so gets you an automatic home run.
To "field" something -- as a political candidate may be said to be fielding questions from the press -- is to successfully catch and play whatever is being thrown at you, as you would if you were playing a field position (defense) in baseball.
We have a lot of expressions that come from that game! Southpaw, hardhitting, heavy hitter, pinch hitter, batter up, at bat, windup, fastball, curveball, getting to first/second/third base, changeup, throwing a curve, a steal, and swings both ways are all baseball terms that have found their way into general speech, often with highly modified meanings.