Meaning
To take your turn at responsibility - to come forward and do the job that needs doing, especially when others have hung back. The phrase carries the batter's box's mixture of exposure and obligation: everyone is watching, and it is your swing to take. American in register; British speakers sometimes substitute 'step up to the mark', which is a different idiom with a shared skeleton. Regional use: American English (widely borrowed).
Origin
Plainly American and plainly baseball: the plate is the marker showing where the batter stands, and stepping up to it is simply what a batter does when his turn comes. The Phrase Finder's earliest print citation is from the Chicago Tribune of May 1874, describing the White Stockings against Hartford: 'The visitors were put out as fast as they stepped up to the plate.' Decades of sporting literalism followed before the metaphor took over - Ammer's Dictionary of Clichés notes that from the late 1900s the expression was frequently transferred to other enterprises, especially business and politics, where it is now the routine compliment paid to anyone who accepts an unfashionable task. Dictionaries mark it mainly American, COBUILD among them, though it has travelled well beyond.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- step up to the plate and deliver
- stepped up to the plate
- stepping up to the plate
Usage Examples
- When the treasurer resigned a week before the audit, the office manager stepped up to the plate and found eleven years of receipts.
- The party needed a candidate willing to step up to the plate in a seat everyone else had written off.
- It is one thing to step up to the plate and another to stay in the box when the first pitch is high and tight.