Meaning
A situation or set of circumstances that differs fundamentally from a previous or familiar one, as Wiktionary defines it; McGraw-Hill's slang dictionary glosses it as a completely different situation. Usually spoken as a verdict - now that the regulator is involved, it's a whole new ball game - and it carries more force than a mere change: the old rules no longer apply. Collins notes the baseball sense behind the American usage. Spacing varies: ball game or ballgame, the closed form common in sports pages. Do not confuse with this site's step up to the plate or ballpark figure, which borrow other parts of the game. Regional use: American English origin; now general English.
Origin
Built on ball game, a word the OED first records in 1791 (in a translation by J. Trapp) and Merriam-Webster dates to 1760, long before the phrase meant anything figurative. The figurative extension rests on ball game's American standing for baseball - Collins' idiom guide notes that ball game is often used in American English to mean a game of baseball - so that a whole new ball game announced a fresh contest with the slate wiped clean. The idiom is twentieth-century American, and the references consulted print no first-use year for the figurative compound; baseball's century of dominance in American sportswriting made the metaphor transparent. The negative cousin a whole different ball game and the shortened a new ball game are attested alongside it.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a new ball game
- a whole different ball game
- whole new ballgame
Usage Examples
- Raising your own children after a decade of teaching other people's is a whole new ball game.
- He thought television experience would carry over, but filmmaking proved a whole new ball game.
- Once the antitrust lawyers opened their inquiry, it was a whole new ball game for the merger.