home plate

American  

noun

Baseball.

home plates plural

1. the base at which the batter stands and which a base runner must reach safely in order to score a run, typically a five-sided slab of whitened rubber set at ground level at the front corner of the diamond.

---

home plate British  

noun

1. Also called: plate.   home.   home base.  baseball a flat often five-sided piece of hard rubber or other material that serves to define the area over which the pitcher must throw the ball for a strike and that a base runner must safely reach on his way from third base to score a run

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• home plates
  plural

Etymology

Origin of home plate

An Americanism dating back to 1870–75

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

home plate

All the tickets in Irvine put you right behind home plate, because there are barely 1,000 seats.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026

He heard it while sitting around home plate at Cal listening to a motivational talk that longtime Cal coach Bob Milano made the team hear over the stadium’s loudspeakers.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 26, 2026

After Bravo’s arms go up over his head in his windup, he also does a brief hesitation breathing in and out before throwing the ball toward home plate.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 22, 2026

One bright afternoon, Obama took in a baseball game with then-President Raúl Castro, the leaders of longtime enemy nations chatting behind home plate.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 20, 2026

It has been calculated that a baseball thrown at a hundred miles an hour will pick up 0.000000000002 grams of mass on its way to home plate.

From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson