Origin: Raincheck

Here's my arbitrary word of the day.

Where did the word raincheck come from?

How was it first used?

In my search, I came across RandomHouse which has a lot of interesting links (a bit of side info for the bookish types).

According to them, this phrase dates back to the 1880's.

Extract:

The literal sense of rain check, which is an Americanism, is first found in the 1880s in reference to a baseball game. The practice of giving a rain check to a ticketholder was formalized in 1890 in the constitution of the National League.

So, when it first started out, the ticket was a sort of voucher that assured future game for those who missed game due to rain or other game interrupting circumstances.