hit home

English

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Pronunciation

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Verb

hit home (third-person singular simple present hits home, present participle hitting home, simple past and past participle hit home)

1. (idiomatic) To be especially memorable, meaningful, or significant; to be fully understood, believed or appreciated.

   Synonyms: strike a chord, strike home

   Do you think the message really hit home with him?

   Baked goodies can really hit home with a crowd.

   • 2008, Gordon Watt, Fading Home, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 297:

     Which led me to publish it, to see if it hits home at all. Which, to me, is the point of the written word, the novels: Our desire to be reassured and read that, in all this, we're not alone.

2. (of an attack, weapon, or projectile) To strike its target with damaging effect.
   • 2021 May 5, Drachinifel, 32:32 from the start, in Battle of Samar - What if TF34 was there?‎^[1], archived from the original on 8 August 2022:

     This revised situation doesn't go well for poor old Nagato. Whilst curls of smoke and scorch marks along the hulls and superstructures of Washington and Alabama do tell of some Japanese shells hitting home, neither of them seem particularly perturbed by this. Instead, their fire begins to overhaul the Japanese battleship, and, sooner or later, another salvo of 16-inch shells - no one's quite sure whether it comes from Alabama or Washington - smashes into the base of the superfiring aft turret.

Translations

to be especially memorable

• Finnish: mennä perille
• French: faire mouche (fr)
• Spanish: es especialmente memorable

See also

• bat a thousand
• hit a home run

Further reading

• “hit home”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.