{"id":1037,"date":"2016-04-20T13:31:33","date_gmt":"2016-04-20T11:31:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/?p=1037"},"modified":"2016-04-20T13:51:22","modified_gmt":"2016-04-20T11:51:22","slug":"idiom-119-take-a-rain-check","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/idiom-119-take-a-rain-check\/","title":{"rendered":"Idiom 119- take a rain check"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A conversation among colleagues at lunch:<\/p>\n<p><em>Dave, are you coming with us to <\/em><em>the new gallery after work today?<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>Oh no!\u00a0I forgot about that, Abby.\u00a0I&#8217;ll have to <strong>take a rain check<\/strong>. <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>Could we go next week instead?<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>Well, today&#8217;s the opening, so Tom and I will go anyway. But we&#8217;ll tell you if it&#8217;s worth it!<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">In this context, <em>to\u00a0<\/em><em>take a rain check<\/em> means so much as &#8222;etwas auf ein andermal verschieben&#8220;, it&#8217;s just a much more idiomatic \u00a0way of explaining it than the German equivalent!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This is a rain check:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/old-tiger-stadium.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-1038\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/old-tiger-stadium-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"old-tiger-stadium\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/old-tiger-stadium-300x225.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/old-tiger-stadium.jpg 577w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">It used to be sold\u00a0to spectators at a baseball game when rain or other bad weather stopped play completely, and allowed them to return on another night and watch another game.\u00a0You might be surprised that the whole game was stopped because of a little rain, because soccer players and other athletes play in some pretty extreme weather.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">However,\u00a0in baseball, the condition of the sandy diamond is very important for play. If it becomes too wet, players running could slip and injure themselves. Therefore, the risk of stopped play becomes very high when the weather is bad.\u00a0Rain checks became popular in the beginning of the 20th century, mostly because they prevented stadium operators from losing\u00a0 income generated by ticket and food or drink sales during extended periods of bad weather.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Nowadays, we use the phrase\u00a0<em>to\u00a0<\/em><em>take a rain check\u00a0<\/em>to postpone any plans that we&#8217;ve made but can&#8217;t attend.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Also, don&#8217;t be surprised if you see more posts about idioms that have their roots in baseball over the next several weeks. April is the traditional beginning of the baseball season and the sport has given speakers of American English many idioms that are often used in a business setting.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A conversation among colleagues at lunch: Dave, are you coming with us to the new gallery after work today? Oh no!\u00a0I forgot about that, Abby.\u00a0I&#8217;ll have to take a rain check. Could we go next week instead? Well, today&#8217;s the opening, so Tom and I will go anyway. But we&#8217;ll tell you if it&#8217;s worth [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[22,10,32],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1037"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1048,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037\/revisions\/1048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lingua-franca.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}