pinch-hit
pinch-hit verb: to bat in place of another player.
Verb
pinch-hit (third-person singular simple present pinch-hits, present participle pinch-hitting, simple past and past participle pinch-hit)
- To bat in place of another player
- Jones pinch-hit for Smith in the sixth.
- “Some people think that pitchers aren't complete athletes and some of them maybe weren't, but others were, so I think you'd remember Red Ruffing who used to pinch‐hit all the time, sometimes for outfielders, even though he was as complete a pitcher there was. […]” If he is wrong, however, and...1973 January 4, Wells Twombly, “Now the 10th man”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 13 Mar 2022
- To do something in the place of another person who is not able to perform or is less skilled; to substitute or stand in for somebody.
- Jones pinch-hit for Smith during today's presentation.
Forms of pinch-hit
| third-person singular present | pinch-hits |
|---|---|
| present participle | pinch-hitting |
| past participle | pinch-hit |
| past | pinch-hit |
Questions about pinch-hit
- What does pinch-hit mean?
- Pinch-hit means to bat in place of another player.
- What part of speech is pinch-hit?
- Pinch-hit is a verb.
- What is the past tense of pinch-hit?
- The past tense of pinch-hit is pinch-hit.
Words near pinch-hit in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pinch-hit (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-pinch-hit.ogg.
Cite this entry: “pinch-hit.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pinch-hit. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.