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quarta-feira, 31 de agosto de 2016

O que significa "to be batting a thousand"?

You don't have to be an advanced English student to know by this point that a thousand is a number. What many students still don't know though is that a thousand can be part of many expressions in English. Today I want to introduce to you one of them. But before I get into it, I think it's important to say that as a number a thousand can't be plural, so you can't say two thousands or three thousands. It's always 2, 3, 10 thousand. So let's get started!

To be batting a thousand. What does that mean? Before I tell you what it means, picture yourself in this situation: you need to ask your boss for a salary raise. You've been an excellent loyal employee for many years and now that you are in serious need of a raise you think you have the right to go for it this time. Or at least you did. The moment you walk into your boss' office you become very skeptical about the chances you have to get that raise. But you start talking anyway. Before you explain your reasons as to why you should be given that benefit, the unexpected happens: your boss interrupts you in the middle of your speech and says you don't need to worry. He'd been considering that idea for a lot of time himself and thought he could do even better by giving you a promotion. When you go back home and tell your wife about what just happened, here's what you say: You won't believe it but I was batting a thousand today. I went up to my boss to ask for a salary raise and he gave me something even better: a promotion! Can you believe that?

When you're batting a thousand, you do something extremely well and better than you had hoped to do it. If you're one of those students who won't settle before understanding every little aspect of the expression, I can give you its Etymology: the term comes from baseball statistics, where it signifies getting a hit for every turn at bat (that's the reason for the gif above). It was transferred to other activities in the 1920s.

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