on deck

on deck

1. (nautical) On the deck of a ship, especially of a captain or officer; in charge.
   • 1899 September – 1900 July, Joseph Conrad, chapter 19, in Lord Jim: A Tale, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1900, →OCLC, page 213:

     In every sense of the expression he is ‘on deck’; but my Jim, for the most part, skulked down below as though he had been a stowaway.

2. (baseball) Being the batter who will be up next, typically when that player is waiting on the field.

   Jones is the on-deck batter.

• on the deck

• at-bat

• conked, nocked