![]() ![]() Referring to "in the hold" is also problematic in that is flies in the face of at least 50 years of baseball usage. An aircraft carrier has a hangar deck, but it has no compartment, and especially no compartment that a pilot would be waiting his turn in, called a "hold." I refer you here to the unsourced Wikipedia article about the origins of "on deck" and "in the hole" as baseball terms.Īt least one online source I've uncovered suggests "in the hold" is the preferred usage here (even while acknowledging that the expression has its roots in aircraft carriers), but that is highly problematic in that an aircraft carrier does not have a hold. A pilot "in the hole" would be below the surface of the deck, waiting his turn to go until the pilot "on deck" has launched. Which is to suggest that you can only launch one fighter at a time, implying that there's an order to follow when getting multiple fighters launched.Ī pilot "on deck" would be ready to go. Documentation is scant or non-existent on the origins of the expressions, but it seems relatively easy to fit the pieces together.įollowing World War II, when aircraft carriers first came into wartime use, lots of men came home to the United States with many hours of experience launching planes off the decks of ships called aircraft carriers.Īs you can see from the aircraft carrier photo at the top of this article, the runway for getting that fighter jet off the deck of the ship isn't very long. Specifically, it seems fairly unanimous that the origins of the expressions came from aircraft carriers. The expressions "on deck" and "in the hole" or "on hold" have naval (be careful to get the spelling right on that one) origins. The online sources are pretty much in agreement. Thank you, Ben, and now here's a little more ranting for you. Well, that has spun up a whole lot of conversation, mostly offline, though some has spilled over into the comments on the article.īen Hershelman even corrected the lead sentence in my article, telling me "On the contrary, I do visit Colorado Track XC to hear you rant about things." I stated that the correct usage would be "on deck" and "in the hole." In yesterday's article touching on all sorts of things about track and field that alternately get my goat or tickle my funny bone I commented, rather dogmatically, that referring to field eventers about to come up for their trials as "on deck" and "on hold" is incorrect. Something I wrote in an article yesterday has spun up a lot of attention.
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