Off his own back?

[princerupe74]

The phrase referring to a person doing something independently....is it "Off his own back" or "Off his own bat?"

[factor-fiction]

bat
(although it's common for people to get it wrong, and people know what you mean if you get it wrong)

[princerupe74]

so it's a kind of cricket reference...?

[factor-fiction]

http://idioms.thefree...onary.com/off+own+bat
I'm not sure of the origin of the phrase- you'd need to look that up

[factor-fiction]

http://www.englishclu..._your_own_bat_333.htm
The phrase is thought to have come from cricket but as with many of these expressions the origin cannot be proved

[Quizmonster]

The earliest recorded use of the phrase 'off his own bat' appeared in 1742 in "Cricket Scores" by H T Waghorn, so definitely originally a cricketing term.

[Nibble]

The first citation of 'off his own bat' in print comes from the pen of the celebrated cricket historian and statistician Henry Thomas Waghorn, in Cricket Scores, 1742:


"The bets on the Slendon man's head that he got 40 notches off his own bat were lost."

The 'Slendon man' was probably Richard Newland, the star of the Slindon Cricket Club and cricket's first great all-rounder.

It is worth noting that the phrase is found in print several times during the next century and all of the known citations are explicit cricket references - the other supposed derivations of 'bat' in this context owe everything to imagination and nothing to evidence.