"Lucked Out"

[peterbj7]

Can someone explain the derivation of this expression, and also when it first came about?  I don't know whether it only comes from the USA or whether it's also found in Canada.  It sure isn't used in Britain and I've never heard it in Australia or South Africa.  It is completely counter-intuitive, and I can't help feeling it's come about much the same way as that most irritating of expressions "I could care less", instead of "I couldn't care less" - people deliberately saying something that is "different" regardless of the fact that it's utterly meaningless.  I've tried several sources (dictionaries, encyclopaedias) without success.

[clover]

Looks like a likely Americanism vs. Brit slang!

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/luck_out

[Gela]

Peter - there are so many of these slang expressions that it's difficult to leave them out in every day speech.  I've had to be mindful of such things when I worked for a Japanese company.  The blank looks on their faces were funny but nonproductive   

How about this one:  "batting a thousand".  That one always gets me.

[clover]

batting 1000 or batting a thousand — Getting everything in a series of items right. In baseball, someone with a batting average of one thousand (written as 1.000) has had a hit for every at bat in the relevant time period (e.g. in a game).

[peterbj7]

Looks like a likely Americanism vs. Brit slang!

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/luck_out

Thanks - I didn't find this when I looked at Wikipedia.  Says it all really - completely opposite meanings.  Though at least the British one makes some sense.

[clover]

Baseball is America's favorite sport...hence batting a thousand makes more sense here

[peterbj7]

Rounders ("baseball" in the USA) is traditionally a young kids' game in England.  I stopped playing it by about the age of 11.  In recent years TV has helped promulgate some interest in American baseball, but still really as a minority spectator sport.

[clover]

Stick with cricket...leave the man sports to the Americans

[peterbj7]

Spoken by someone who evidently has never played cricket.

[clover]

Obviously you never played baseball either......or you'd understand why they make millions of dollars every year.

PS stick to "rounders"

[papashine]

Actually......Rounders is a game played between two teams each alternating between batting and fielding. The game originates in England and has been played there since Tudor times, with the earliest reference being in 1745 in A Little Pretty Pocket-Book where it is called "baseball". It is a striking and fielding team game, which involves hitting a small, hard, leather-cased ball with a round wooden, plastic or metal bat and then running around four bases in order to score.[1][2] Especially amongst girls, the game is popular in the UK and Ireland for schoolchildren.[3]

The first nationally formalised rules were drawn up by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in Ireland in 1884. The game is regulated by the GAA in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and the National Rounders Association (NRA) in Great Britain. Both have different, although similar, game-play and culture. Competitions are held between teams from both traditions with games alternating between codes, often one version being played in the morning and the other in the afternoon.

Game-play centres around innings where teams alternate at batting and fielding. A maximum of nine players are allowed to field at one time. Points ('rounders') are scored by the batting team by completing a circuit around the field through four bases or posts without being put 'out'.

After rules were first formalised in Ireland, in 1889 associations were established in Liverpool and Scotland. The NRA was not formed until 1943. Baseball (both the 'New York game' and the now-defunct 'Massachusetts game') as well as softball are likely to share the same historical roots as rounders and bear a resemblance to the GAA version of the game (see origins of baseball). Rounders is linked to British baseball, still played in Liverpool, Cardiff and Newport. Although rounders is assumed to be older than baseball, literary references to early forms of "base-ball" in England pre-date use of the term "rounders". Rounders is now played from school-level to international.
...

[peterbj7]

Obviously you never played baseball either......or you'd understand why they make millions of dollars every year.
PS stick to "rounders"

I understand perfectly well why Baseball earns millions of $ each year - it's a good spectator sport, especially since the TV age started.  And it's ideal for TV, as all the action takes place in a small area.  Cricket is spread over a much larger area, so it's both harder to watch and to film.

But my point about cricket is that it isn't the gentle "gentleman's game" that it might appear to be.  It's potentially a very dangerous sport.  It used to be compulsory at my school in the summer months until one day a boy fielding in "the slips" was killed when the ball hit him on the head.  I was in that game and on the field at the time.  A cricket ball is heavy and hard, and can readily be travelling at much more than 100mph.

I used to play Rounders, which is virtually indistinguishable from Baseball other than the absence of TV cameras, and I certainly know how to play it.

Another game that appears to be totally genteel but is very far from, though it's not usually dangerous, is Croquet.  A most superb game of strategy, tactics, and rank malice!  It also calls for a lot of skill.

[rykat]

Can someone explain the derivation of this expression, and also when it first came about?  I don't know whether it only comes from the USA or whether it's also found in Canada.  It sure isn't used in Britain and I've never heard it in Australia or South Africa.  It is completely counter-intuitive, and I can't help feeling it's come about much the same way as that most irritating of expressions "I could care less", instead of "I couldn't care less" - people deliberately saying something that is "different" regardless of the fact that it's utterly meaningless.  I've tried several sources (dictionaries, encyclopaedias) without success.

How'a bout:
It is worth noting a bizarre irony in all this discussion. One of the nits that prescriptivists like to pick is the use of split infinitive - "to boldly go" instead of "to go boldly". To insert an adverb willy-nilly into an infinitive verb such as "to go", it is said, is to commit an unpardonable sin against our language. What is forgotten amidst the carping and whining is that English did not originally prohibit split infinitives. However, in the Enlightenment, with the rise of classical scholarship, the English language underwent a transformation, picking up a veritable cornucopia of Latin words as well as Latin grammatical habits. And, while in English, infinitives are expressed in two words, such as "to complain", Latin infinitives require only one "queror". Of course, you can't split a single word. Thus, in a desire to make English more like Latin, grammarians decreed that henceforth, thou shalt not split thy infinitives. Similarly, in Latin, one cannot end a sentence with a preposition; thus, it was forbidden to end English sentences in that way. Ask yourself whether these Latin rules of grammar truly contribute to comprehensibility and clarity in English, or whether it might in fact be an impediment. I think you will conclude, to again quote (to quote again?) Winston Churchill, that "this is the sort of impertinence up with which I will not put."

not precise but relative?

[deadserious]

I thought Rounders were poker players...

[Otteralum]

I've found most poker players to be round...