take the field

Field  (fld), Cyrus West 1819-1892.

American merchant and financier who planned and oversaw the laying of the transatlantic telegraph cable (completed 1866).

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Field, Eugene 1850-1895.

American writer known for his children's verse, especially "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" and "Little Boy Blue."

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Field, Marshall 1834-1906.

American merchant who organized Marshall Field and Company, the largest wholesale and retail dry goods establishment of the late 1800s.

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field  (fld)

n.

1.

a. A broad, level, open expanse of land.

b. A meadow: a field of buttercups.

c. A cultivated expanse of land, especially one devoted to a particular crop: a field of corn.

d. A portion of land or a geologic formation containing a specified natural resource.

e. A wide unbroken expanse, as of ice.

2.

a. A battleground.

b. A battle.

c. The scene or an area of military operations or maneuvers.

d. A military area away from headquarters.

3.

a. A background area, as on a flag, painting, or coin: a blue insignia on a field of red.

b. Heraldry The background of a shield or one of the divisions of the background.

4. Sports

a. An area in which an athletic event takes place, especially the area inside or near to a running track, where field events are held.

b. The portion of a playing field having specific dimensions on which the action of a game takes place.

c. All the contestants or participants in an event, especially all the contestants except the favorite or the winner in a contest of more than two.

d. The members of a team engaged in active play.

e. The body of riders following a pack of hounds in hunting.

5.

a. An area of human activity or interest: several fields of endeavor.

b. A topic, subject, or area of academic interest or specialization.

c. Profession, employment, or business.

d. An area or setting of practical activity or application outside an office, school, factory, or laboratory: biologists working in the field; a product tested in the field.

e. An area or region where business activities are conducted: sales representatives in the field.

6. Mathematics A set of elements having two operations, designated addition and multiplication, satisfying the conditions that multiplication is distributive over addition, that the set is a group under addition, and that the elements with the exception of the additive identity form a group under multiplication.

7. Physics A region of space characterized by a physical property, such as gravitational or electromagnetic force or fluid pressure, having a determinable value at every point in the region.

8. The usually circular area in which the image is rendered by the lens system of an optical instrument. Also called field of view.

9. Computer Science

a. A defined area of a storage medium, such as a set of bit locations or a set of adjacent columns on a punch card, used to record a type of information consistently.

b. An element of a database record in which one piece of information is stored.

c. An interface element in a GUI that accepts the input of text.

adj.

1. Growing, cultivated, or living in fields or open land.

2. Made, used, or carried on in the field: field operations.

3. Working, operating, or active in the field: field representatives of a firm.

v. field·ed, field·ing, fields

v.tr.

1. Sports

a. To retrieve (a ball) and perform the required maneuver, especially in baseball.

b. To place in the field to play: field a team.

2. To respond to: fielded tough questions from the press.

3.

a. To place in competition.

b. To put into action: field an army of campaign workers.

4. Computer Science To enter (data) into a field.

v.intr. Sports

To play as a fielder.

Idiom:

take the field

To begin or resume activity, as in military operations or in a sport.

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[Middle English, from Old English feld; see pel-² in Indo-European roots.]

Synonyms: field, bailiwick, domain, province, realm, sphere, territory
These nouns denote an area of activity, thought, study, or interest: the field of comparative literature; considers marketing to be her bailiwick; the domain of physics; the province of politics; the realm of constitutional law; a task within his assistant's sphere; the territory of historical research.

Thesaurus

Verb	1.	take the field - go on a campaign; go off to war campaign crusade - go on a crusade; fight a holy war
	2.	take the field - go on the playing field, of a football team come in, enter, get in, go in, go into, move into, get into - to come or go into; "the boat entered an area of shallow marshes"