Ballpark

Origin of: Ballpark

Ballpark

Originally, from the late 19th century, this is an American term for a baseball stadium. Its figurative sense of a reasonably accurate approximation dates from the 1960s when the expression was first used by NASA to predict the approximate area in which a returning spacecraft was expected to land. The expressions within the ballpark and out of the ballpark date from the same period and refer to estimates that are within a particular area or range.