Bat \Bat\, n. [Corrupt. from OE. back, backe, balke; cf. Dan. aften-bakke (aften evening), Sw. natt-backa (natt night), Icel. le[eth]r-blaka (le[eth]r leather), Icel. blaka to flutter.] (Zo["o]l.) One of the {Chiroptera}, an order of flying mammals, in which the wings are formed by a membrane stretched between the elongated fingers, legs, and tail. The common bats are small and insectivorous. See {Chiroptera} and {Vampire}.
Silent bats in drowsy clusters cling. --Goldsmith.
{Bat tick} (Zo["o]l.), a wingless, dipterous insect of the genus {Nycteribia}, parasitic on bats. ※ ||
Bat \Bat\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Batted} (b[a^]t"t[e^]d); p. pr. & vb. n. {Batting}.] To strike or hit with a bat or a pole; to cudgel; to beat. --Holland.
Bat \Bat\, v. i. To use a bat, as in a game of baseball; when used with a numerical postmodifier it indicates a baseball player's performance (as a decimal) at bat; as, he batted .270 in 1993 (i.e. he got safe hits in 27 percent of his official turns at bat). [1913 Webster +PJC]
Bat \Bat\ (b[a^]t), n. [OE. batte, botte, AS. batt; perhaps fr. the Celtic; cf. Ir. bat, bata, stick, staff; but cf. also F. batte a beater (thing), wooden sword, battre to beat.] 1. A large stick; a club; specifically, a piece of wood with one end thicker or broader than the other, used in playing baseball, cricket, etc.
2. In badminton, tennis, and similar games, a racket. [Webster 1913 Suppl.]
3. A sheet of cotton used for filling quilts or comfortables; batting.
4. A part of a brick with one whole end; a brickbat. [1913 Webster +PJC]
5. (Mining) Shale or bituminous shale. --Kirwan.
6. A stroke; a sharp blow. [Colloq. or Slang] [Webster 1913 Suppl.]
7. A stroke of work. [Scot. & Prov. Eng.] [Webster 1913 Suppl.]
8. Rate of motion; speed. [Colloq.] ``A vast host of fowl . . . making at full bat for the North Sea.'' --Pall Mall Mag. [Webster 1913 Suppl.]
9. A spree; a jollification. [Slang, U. S.] [Webster 1913 Suppl.]
10. Manner; rate; condition; state of health. [Scot. & Prov. Eng.] [Webster 1913 Suppl.]
{Bat bolt} (Machinery), a bolt barbed or jagged at its butt or tang to make it hold the more firmly. --Knight.
Bat \Bat\, v. t. & i. 1. To bate or flutter, as a hawk. [Obs. or Prov. Eng.] [Webster 1913 Suppl.]
2. To wink. [Local, U. S. & Prov Eng.] [Webster 1913 Suppl.]
Bat \Bat\, n. [Siamese.] Same as {Tical}, n., 1. [Webster 1913 Suppl.]
The Whitneys discovered the bats when Bill peeked into the attic and saw foot-high mounds of bat guano.
The pitch sailed toward Bobby Thomson high and inside and then, with a crack of the bat, was sent rocketing back into the lower leftfield stands.
Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer, wields a heavy bat at the talks.
Scientists have relied on primitive and unpleasant methods of estimating bat populations.
Clark gained fame and plaudits from the Reagan administration and most of his school's students and parents for his no-nonsense approach, which included roaming the halls with a baseball bat and a bullhorn.
Tuan Ana Cao, 36, was hit with a baseball bat and was in guarded condition today with a skull fracture at Kings County Hospital.
Fortunately, conservationists say, they live to be 20. Nonetheless, the world's bat population has declined drastically in recent years because of vandalism and hunting of the animals in some countries.
"Well, now I might bat from there, too."
Thrilled biologists took the bat to an animal clinic, where it was nursed back to health.
As I went in to bat at the end of the game, a unanimous choice as No 11, Courtney grabbed the ball.
"I brought the bat down on her head quickly.
In the three-page statement taken by the police and signed by Mondello on the day after the shooting, he admits organizing the mob, knowing that at least one person had a gun and carrying a baseball bat when Hawkins was shot.
He said that in the 1984 murder Kindler bludgeoned a man to death with a baseball bat.
In the US Sotheby's secured a record Dollars 63,000 for a baseball bat: it had been used by Babe Ruth. Henry Wyndham, chairman of Sotheby's in London, reports that sales this year are 4 per cent up, and its good things are yet to come.
The latest act of violence occurred Thursday afternoon when a physical education teacher came upon an intruder rifling through students' gym bags outside a Bronx school and was beaten unconscious with a baseball bat.
Entertainer Bob Hope is exchanging his trademark golf club for a bat to serve as a team captain tonight in country singer Barbara Mandrell's annual celebrity softball classic.
"In a game, if you get up to bat 10 times, you've got a good chance of getting at least a couple hits," he says.
Mayor Jay DeYoe stopped filling orders for the bat droppings this week after a Delaware woman warned that the brown, gritty substance could spread the fungal disease histoplasmosis.
A black man walking home from his job at a fast-food restaurant was attacked early Wednesday by six white men who shouted racial slurs as they pummelled him with sticks and a baseball bat, police said.
"We haven't been able to get a single foreign company to stand up to bat" on the superconductivity project, says John Stern, Tokyo representative for America's two biggest electronics-industry associations.
His head was split open with a softball bat.
One major piece, a Zapotec mask of the bat god Murcielago from the Monte Alban ruins in southern Mexico, had come apart and had to be repaired, he said.
"If you equalize for height, you'd have good competition right off the bat."
The address is on a dark street and the caller turns out to be a teen-ager carrying a baseball bat.
Tartaglia, for instance, has elements of a bat and a bear, but actually is a unique creation.
I made the bat on the big hand and the ball with all the stitchings on the end of the small hand," he said.
Their captain is one of the Illingworth clan, born in Lancaster, now a police officer in South Island. She is naturally competitive but it never occurred to her when she won the toss that by putting England in to bat she might be giving them a nice start.
"This guy has repeatedly said he has done this entirely off his own bat," the spokesman said.
The sound of temple bells drifted on the evening breeze and, in the parched section of the lake, schoolboys played cricket with a home-made bat. Later I returned to Sanjay's Rooftop Restaurant.
Prosecutors say Matthews, who is on trial as an adult, clubbed Ouillette to death with a baseball bat for a thrill.