You have surely encountered social media posts about somebody shooting their shot with someone, or about A fumbling B. These expressions are a usual occurrence on our feeds. However, when was the last time you heard about somebody getting to second or third base with someone? You can’t even remember. That’s fine; me neither. So, why are some sports metaphors for dating popular, and others - not? I think it has to do with sports themselves.

Before elaborating on how sports influence the metaphors we use to describe our daily experiences, I have to explain why sports idioms are so ubiquitous in the first place, and why they are especially popular as descriptors of dating.

According to Dilin Liu (2008), there are three main factors that affect idiom comprehension: familiarity, transparency, and context of use. Idiom familiarity is how popular an expression is in the culture or community, how frequently it is used. An idiom has to be understood, so the more popular it is, the higher the chance that your conversation partner happens to be familiar with it is - the likelier it is that you will be understood.

The second factor is idiom transparency, its ‘literalness.’ Basically, how easy it is to understand, and how clear its message is. There are three categories of idioms, sorted by how literal their acceptation is, how close the meaning of the input words separately is to the meaning of their sum. According to Raymond W. Gibbs (1980), the more transparent an idiom's meaning is, the easier it is for us to understand.

The final factor contributing to idiom comprehension is the context of its use. It is, albeit, more related to children’s understanding of colloquial expressions, as for adults familiarity is the more important feature.

However, when talking specifically about the popularity of sports idioms, the cultural capital of the sports themselves feels like a contributing factor. The sheer popularity of sports, combined with them being one of the most - or the last - universally understandable spheres of pop-culture, makes sports metaphors so widely accepted. Sports are one of the few cultural common denominators we have left. Everybody knows the rules of the sport; everybody has seen at least one sports broadcast; everybody can recognize at least one star athlete. This makes these idioms so widespread in the worlds of business, relationships, media etc.

Dating, similarly to sports, is a universal human experience. It is the most widespread form of romantic relationships, as it simply happens more often than marriages and other forms of romance. To put it simply, you have to date a number of people before one of them leads to the relationship - this explains why sports metaphors are more common when applied specifically to dating.

What makes the sports idioms work best when applied to relationships is that they are all about attempting to achieve something. In sports - and in dating, if you choose to think so - there’s a clear result in the end of an action, success or failure. Same is with dates (sort of) - one of them is successful, and it's a slam-dunk. Another isn’t, and it’s a fumble. An important note: these sports idioms have been criticized as they might contribute to the gamification of dating (Deborah Roffman, 1991). Meaning, that such metaphors make us perceive dating as a competition, a game to be won, and not a mutual experience.

However, all of this does not explain why some sports metaphors for dating are universally used, are in the zeitgeist, and some - aren’t (anymore). I believe it has to do with the changes in the popularity of sports themselves. That these shifts in vernacular English reflect a trend in sports and sports media; they are its symptom.

The most famous sports metaphors for dating can be divided between three sports: baseball, American football, and basketball. First is the origin of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd bases (running the bases together), strikeout, and homerun. Second gave us fumble, or drop the ball, and punt. Third - shoot/take a shot, slam dunk, and layup. Here, you probably can start piecing the theory together yourself.

In short, as baseball slowly faded from popular consciousness post-World War II, so did baseball metaphors. American football and basketball (and their idioms) filled the vacant place. Baseball used to be America’s pastime, it was the predominant sport since the 19th century and until the mid-20th. This is the time when running the bases came to mean stages of dating.

Associated Press, via National Baseball Hall of Fame Library

However, things have changed since the 1950’s. Basketball and American football took baseball’s place in the mainstream culture - and it’s reflected by polls, stadium attendances, TV viewership. Around the same time, basketball and gridiron football metaphors for dating started to emerge too. Fumble, for example, came to mean being unsuccessful at dating in the late 1950’s.

What further exacerbates baseball metaphors’ decline is that younger people are the ones dating the most. They are the part of the demographic for which familiarity with sports idioms for relationships is the most significant. And the popularity of different sports among young people has changed too. Only five percent of 18-29 year-olds are fans of baseball in 2024, compared to 16 percent of 65+ year-olds.

Thus, I attribute the change in what sports metaphors we use to describe our dating experiences to the larger shift in the popularity of the sports themselves. Vernacular language we use, and especially idioms, are a reflection of our popular culture, and any major changes in the latter will be echoed by the former.

What other sphere of pop-culture can speak to as broad an audience as sports do and not be divisive? Religion? Star Wars? Politics? Doubt. Sports are an important part of our culture, one of the very few common denominators, that’s why they are so convenient to describe our daily lives.

Sports Metaphors in Dating

LUCA LALA

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