inning

USIN-ing/ˈɪnɪŋ/

7 meanings of inning

1
nouncountable
In baseball, a division of play in which each team bats until three of its players are put out, with nine or more making up a regulation game.
The pitcher struck out three batters to end the inning.
Both teams went scoreless through the early innings.
Similarframe
Note
A word made by mistake. Innings, which named the batters' entries at the plate, was taken for a plural of the playing period, and inning was clipped off as its singular. Each one splits into halves, the visitors batting first and the home side after. A game still level after nine goes on into extra innings, and the seventh inning stretch, with "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," is a fixed phrase of the sport.
2
nouncountable
In softball and similar bat-and-ball games, a period of play matching the baseball division of the same name, with each side batting and fielding in turn.
The softball game stayed close until the final inning.
She pitched all seven innings of the championship game.
Similarframe
Note
Softball borrows the baseball unit whole, halves included, so the same talk carries over. A side that bats around in its half of the inning has sent every hitter in the lineup to the plate before the third out, which usually means a crowded scoreboard.
3
nouncountable
A chance or opportunity to carry out some deed or action, often one taken in turn with others.
The understudy saw the lead's illness as her inning at last.
Reformers argued that a new generation deserved its inning in government.
Similarturn, chance, opportunity
Note
Here the baseball turn has moved into everyday talk, usually with an ordinal or a possessive. Someone finally gets their inning, or a venture is only in its second inning, meaning it is early days with much still to play. The metaphor keeps the idea of a turn that comes round and then ends, so it suits opportunities shared in rotation.
4
nouncountable
In billiards, a player or team's turn at the table to make shots, lasting until a miss or a foul ends it.
The champion ran sixty points in one inning at the table.
Successive scoreless innings dragged the match out.
Similarturn
Note
At the table the turn has no fixed length. It lasts as long as the shooter keeps scoring and ends only with a miss or a foul, not with outs as in the baseball division. That makes the inning a measure of skill: a long one is an unbroken run of successful shots, and the players' innings alternate across the match.

Less common meanings

5
verbobsolete
Present participle of inn.
Note
A spelling coincidence: this inning belongs to the verb inn, to lodge, and has nothing to do with the baseball turn. The verb worked both ways. Travelers could be inning somewhere, or a host could be inning them. Both uses are obsolete, so the participle now turns up only in older prose.
6
nounobsolete
The gathering in of a crop from the fields; the work of harvesting.
The steward recorded a bountiful inning of barley that season.
Heavy storms delayed the inning of the hay for a fortnight.
Note
A farming word of Elizabethan English. Richarde Jugge's Anno Quinto Reginae Elizabethe (1563) lists the "inning of corne" beside mowing and reaping, as one stage of bringing grain in. The sense is obsolete. In modern writing it reads as deliberate period color, and harvest or gathering in says the same thing plainly.
7
nounobsolete
Areas of land reclaimed from the sea and made fit for use.
The lord claimed the fresh inning won from the tide.
One of the earliest ‘innings’ of Walland Marsh, after the Norman Conquest,‥has been ever since called Becket's Innings, as this Archbishop has the credit of promoting it.
1880, Archaeologia Cantiana
Note
Usually plural, and best remembered in place names. Archaeologia Cantiana (1880) records Becket's Innings on Walland Marsh. It was one of the earliest stretches of that marsh won from the sea after the Norman Conquest, named for the archbishop credited with promoting the work. Outside such names the word is obsolete, and reclaimed land is the ordinary modern phrase.

Practice

Can you tell the meanings of inning apart? Answer 4 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.

Origin

A back-formation from 'innings,' which was mistakenly taken to be a plural of the time period rather than referring to the entries of the batters or batsmen.