right off the bat

🌎Region: North America 📊Difficulty Level:intermediate

💡Meaning

Immediately; from the very start, without delay or hesitation.

🕰️Origin

From baseball: the moment a ball leaves the bat after being hit. Figuratively, it came to mean doing something immediately at the start of an action or situation.

📝Notes

Common in spoken English. Emphasizes “immediately at the start.” Often used about first impressions, initial reactions, or what happens at the beginning.

💬Examples

Right off the bat, I could tell the meeting was going to run long.
She apologized right off the bat for the confusion in the email.
Right off the bat, the new software felt faster than the old version.
He demanded payment right off the bat, before doing any work.
Right off the bat, we agreed on the budget but argued about the timeline.

📘Grammar & Usage Notes

Usually placed early in the sentence: “Right off the bat, …” or after the verb: “He apologized right off the bat.” Fixed phrase; rarely altered.

🔗Synonyms

right away
immediately
straight away
at once
from the start
from the get-go

↔️Antonyms

eventually
later on
after a while
in the end