Word.ws English Dictionary

eephus

eephus noun: an off-speed pitch with unusually low velocity, intended to catch the hitter off guard.

Noun

eephus (plural not attested)

  1. (no plural) An off-speed pitch with unusually low velocity, intended to catch the hitter off guard.
    • Sewell was determined to live or die by the eephus.2003, Michael Seidel, Ted Williams: a baseball life
    • He figured that, if it were another eephus, he'd have time to react.2004, Fred Cicetti, Saltwater Taffy: A Summer at the Jersey Shore

Forms of eephus

alternative formeephus pitch
alternative formephus

Origin of eephus

The naming of the pitch is generally credited to Maurice Van Robays in 1942, who said "it's a nothin' pitch, and eephus ain't nothing'". However, it is not clear what the source for the name is; possibly Hebrew אפס (“nothing, zero”).

Questions about eephus

What does eephus mean?
Eephus means an off-speed pitch with unusually low velocity, intended to catch the hitter off guard.
What part of speech is eephus?
Eephus is a noun.

Words near eephus in the dictionary

  1. EEOC
  2. EEOs
  3. eep
  4. eeped
  5. eephing
  6. eephus
  7. eepier
  8. eepiest
  9. eepily
  10. eeping
  11. EEPROM

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: eephus (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “eephus.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/eephus. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.