off base

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Related to off base: On a par, bent on, come to terms with

off base

Incorrect; mistaken or misinformed; not aligned with reality. An allusion to baseball, in which baserunners are only "safe" if their foot is touching a "base." Hyphenated if used before a noun. Primarily heard in US. Your arguments would be compelling if your entire premise wasn't completely off base. You need to stop making these off-base assumptions about how the process works.

See also: base, off

*off base

1. Lit. [of a runner in baseball] not having a foot touching the base. (*Typically: be ~; get ~.) The runner was off base but the first baseman didn't tag him out.

2. Fig. unrealistic; inexact; wrong. *Typically: be ~; get ~.) I'm afraid you're off base when you state that this problem will take care of itself. You're way off base if you think I was to blame!

See also: base, off

off base

Wrong, relying on a mistaken premise, as in His description of the accounting system was totally off base. This metaphoric term originated in baseball, where a runner who steps off a base can be put out. [c. 1940]

See also: base, off

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

off base

mainly AMERICAN

COMMON If someone's judgment or opinion is off base, it is mistaken or wrong. Note: In baseball, players have to hit the ball and then run round all four corners or bases to score a run. I don't think the church is off base at all in taking a moral stand on this. For him to blame his mother for this is really off base. Note: In baseball, if a player is caught off base, a member of the opposite team gets them out while they are between bases.

See also: base, off

Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2012

off base

mistaken. North American informal

1947 Time Your Latin American department was off base in its comparison of the Portillo Hotel in Chile with our famous Sun Valley.

See also: base, off

Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017

off ˈbase

(American English, informal)
1 completely wrong about something: You’re way off base with that guess.
2 unprepared: The question caught her off base.

In baseball, a base is one of the four positions that a player must reach in order to score points.

See also: base, off

Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017

way off (base)

mod. on the wrong track; completely wrong. (see also off base.) Sorry. You are way off. You should just give up.

off base

Badly mistaken.

See also: base, off

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

off base

Mistaken, incorrect, wrong. This term dates from the first half of the 1900s and alludes to baseball, where a runner whose foot is not touching a base may be put out. John Steinbeck used it in In Dubious Battle (1936): “If they can catch us off base, they’ll bounce us.”

See also: base, off

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References in periodicals archive ?

There is significant opportunity for further outreach to Americans residing off base. While analyzing our statistics, we found that there appears to be an opportunity to pre-screen residential areas and perhaps reduce potential victimization.

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However, we are told that talk is so far off base that it isn't even in the stadium.

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Given that it was reached by such a different path, the agreement should help dispel concerns that prior measurements are off base for some common reason, Faller says.

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The CPSC's recent report on soft baseballs, which he calls "off base," confirmed his belief that the government has no business interfering with the way he selects equipment for the league.

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This was the beginning of the understanding that radioactivity added substantial heat to the Earth's crust, enough to balance that lost by radiation, so that any attempt to judge the Earth's age by calculating the time it took Earth to "cool down" from an initial high temperature was far off base. Earth could be billions of years old and still retain a heated interior.

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While we in the West are continually thrown off base by vagaries in the marketplace, changes in demand for our products, the Japanese continue to stay "centered" - focused on the long term, spending enormous capital on research and development to find out where tomorrow's center will reside.

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"Somewhere along the line we've gotten off base. Congress is deliberately trying to take the risk out of a risktaking business, and that just won't work."

AICPA banking conference: life after FDICIA

This involves making numerous phone calls to the homes of personnel living off base, and to those that hold off-base part-time jobs.

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Get a quote for your next holiday or any trips you plan to do over the year ahead by calling 0800 848 8688 or visit readerdeal.co.uk and use promo code reader20 to get 20% off base price*

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Inappropriate Hitler analogies are tossed around so casually and so often, it's easy to forget that not every comparison to the Nazi regime is completely off base.