innings

UK/ˈɪn.ɪŋz/

nounB2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,433 of 15,258mostly written

An innings is the period during which a team or a player bats. A long innings, declare the innings, out first ball of the innings.

The word is singular in cricket with an s already on it, which catches everybody — one innings, two innings. Americans say inning without the s for baseball. A good innings said of a long life is one of the kindest uses of a sporting term there is.

Definitions of innings

1nouninningsThe period during which a team or player bats.B2
“The captain scored a hundred runs in a brilliant innings.”

innings is a turn at batting.

Where it comes from

From an old verb inn, to house or gather in, from in. The word first named a turn at gathering crops.

Built from

inn · English — to house corn

From the old verb inn (“to house corn”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sports & Games Played

Practise this word

innings in the wild

Matches must allow for the teams to play two innings each, although in practice a team might play only one innings or none if the match is abandoned.
First-class cricket
Runners left on base by a pitcher are not counted in determining innings pitched.
Innings pitched
Unlike One Day Internationals, Test matches consist of two innings per team, with no limit in the number of overs.
List of Test cricket records
MLB officially defines a no-hitter as a completed game in which a team that batted in at least nine complete innings recorded no hits.
No-hitter
WHIP is calculated by adding the number of walks and hits allowed and dividing this sum by the number of innings pitched.
Walks plus hits per inning pitched

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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