| 词汇 | out of left field |
| 词源 | out of left field. Since left field is not any more odd or less active a position than right or center field in baseball, it is hard to understand why it is featured in this common slang expression meaning “very unorthodox and wrong, weirdly unconventional, even crazy.” In fact, anyone who has ever played sandlot baseball knows that the most inept (and there- fore a little odd, to kids) fielders were relegated to right field, because there were fewer left-handed hitters to pull the ball to right field. It has been suggested that the phrase refers to the left field seats in Yankee Stadium that are far away from the coveted seats near Babe Ruth’s right field position. Another suggestion links the phrase to the Neuropsychiatric Institute flanking left field in Chicago’s 19th-century West Side Park, though there are no references to the expression at that time. I would suspect that the words simply refer to the relative re- moteness of left field compared to all other positions except center field and that left field is used instead of center field in the expression because center by definition means in the mid- dle (of things) and left has long had negative associations of clumsiness, awkwardness, and radical or eccentric behavior. The expression from out of left field, meaning from out of no- where unexpectedly, lends credence to this remoteness theory. The term left field itself was in use by the mid-1860s, along with the names for the other outfield positions, following by 20 years the first recordings of the names for the infield positions. |
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