up to Idioms

Out of left field

Contribute an edit

Submissions are moderated and will not appear immediately.

Text

Allowed HTML: <em>, <strong>, <i>, <a href>, <p>, <ul>, <ol>, <li>, <sup>, <sub>. Links must be internal relative URLs.
Anything else, eg suggestion of category change, scientific name etc.
Photo of a baseball game
The idiom out of left field means something that is completely unexpected and catches people off guard.

The phrase comes from baseball, where left field is one of the outfield positions. A ball or throw coming from that area could arrive suddenly and unexpectedly, which led to the expression being used for surprising situations.

His question about moving to another country came completely out of left field.