the.com/shutout
The scoreboard's cruelest flex: you played, you just didn't get a receipt.
means A game in which one side is prevented from scoring at all, so the final margin sits on one side of zero.
from A straightforward compound of 'shut' + 'out' — as in shutting someone out of a room, locked away from entry. The sports sense arose in American English in the 1800s, first attached to baseball, where blanking the opposing team of any runs became 'shutting them out' of the scoreboard entirely; the usage spread to hockey, soccer, and other scoring games from there.
- origin
- 19th-century term, shutting the losing team out of scoring entirely
- hockey/soccer
- goalie gets personal credit as if unscored-on is a solo act
- baseball twist
- pitcher can lose a shutout 1-0 and still own the stat
- ultimate burn
- zero isn't nothing, it's a number chosen just for you