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“Hit or miss” is an idiom that means something is unpredictable and can be effective or ineffective. It originated from baseball and is often used to describe athletes. Idioms are phrases that acquire meaning through familiarity in culture and may not be easily guessed by those unfamiliar with them.
“Hit or miss” is an English idiom that refers to something that is effective at times but ineffective at other times. Unlike things that are reliable in the results they produce, things described this way produce results that are nearly impossible to predict. In sports, the phrase refers to a player who shows up occasionally but fails just as often. In fact, the phrase “hit or miss” comes from the sport of baseball, referring to hitters who make contact with the ball or swing and miss.
There are times when an English speaker may find it beneficial to use phrases that acquire their meaning through familiarity in the culture. These phrases are called idioms and the meanings they have may not be easily guessed by those unfamiliar with them. This is because those meanings might stray somewhat from the literal definitions of the words used. Many of these idioms over the past century have come from the world of sports, which has such a powerful hold on popular culture. One of those sports-related idioms is the expression “hit or miss”.
If something or someone is described in this way, it means that they are essentially unpredictable. They are most likely to succeed when they set out to do something. On the next occasion, they are just as likely to fail. Since the phrase comes from sporting origins, athletes are often described with this idiom. For example, someone might say, “I can’t begin to predict whether he’ll take this shot, because he’s so erratic.”
This phrase is also malleable enough to describe anything that produces some kind of result. Anything that produces as many positive results as negative results could be described in this way. Since there is a balance of good and bad implied in this phrase, it can also be used to describe something mean or mediocre. For example, imagine the sentence, “We can go to that restaurant if you want, but be warned the food is hit and miss.”
In the sport of baseball, a batter tries to hit a pitched ball from the pitcher. On some occasions, the batter may hit the ball. Other times, he might swing and miss. This feature of the sport is the origin of the phrase “hit or miss” and is also where its accepted meaning as an idiom comes from.
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