English Explanatory Dictionary

pit

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A hole in the ground.
  2. An area at a racetrack used for refueling and repairing the vehicles during a race.
  3. The section of a marching band containing mallet percussion instruments and other large percussion instruments too large to be marched, such as the tam-tam; the front ensemble. Can also refer to the area on the sidelines where these instruments are placed.
  4. A mine.
  5. A hole or trench in the ground, excavated according to grid coordinates, so that the provenance of any feature observed and any specimen or artifact revealed may be established by precise measurement.
  6. A trading pit.
  7. An armpit.
  8. A luggage hold.
  9. A small surface hole or depression, a fossa.
  10. The indented mark left by a pustule, as in smallpox.
  11. The grave, underworld or Hell.
  12. An enclosed area into which gamecocks, dogs, and other animals are brought to fight, or where dogs are trained to kill rats.
verb
  1. To make pits in; to mark with little hollows.
  2. To put (an animal) into a pit for fighting.
  3. To bring (something) into opposition with something else.
  4. To return to the pits during a race for refuelling, tyre changes, repairs etc.
noun
  1. A seed inside a fruit; a stone or pip inside a fruit.
  2. The core of an implosion nuclear weapon, consisting of the fissile material and any neutron reflector or tamper bonded to it.
verb
  1. To remove the stone from a stone fruit or the shell from a drupe.
noun
  1. A pit bull terrier.
verb
  1. To use the PIT maneuver, especially during a car chase.
name
  1. Abbreviation of Pittsburgh.
noun
  1. Initialism of personal income tax.
  2. Initialism of programmable interval timer.
  3. Initialism of precision immobilization technique: a method for ending car chases by causing a controlled collision, forcing the pursued car into a spin.
  4. Initialism of pursuit intervention technique: the same method for ending car chases.
  5. Initialism of parallel immobilization technique: the same method for ending car chases.

Pronunciation

/pɪt/ [pʰɪʔt] En-us-pit.ogg

Word forms

pit pits pitting pitted PITT Pitt. Pit.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-West Germanic *puti Old English pytt Middle English pit English pit From Middle English pit, pet, püt, from Old English pytt, from Proto-West Germanic *puti, from Latin puteus (“trench, pit, well”), although there are phonetic difficulties.

Synonyms

seed pit stone pyrena pyrene pip pibble pit bull pittie shitbull velvet hippo

Antonyms

land

Related words

pit-a-pat

Derived words

armpit ash pit ashpit ball pit bear pit bell pit bitter pit borrow pit bottomless pit buccal pit burn pit catchpit catch pit cesspit chalkpit charpit Christy pit circle pit claypit clay pit coalpit cockfighting pit cockpit conversation pit corn-pit cyclone pit dish pit dome pit elbow pit eye-pit fire pit firepit flea pit gong-pit gravel pit grease pit gun pit Hatschek's pit he who digs a pit for others falls in himself inspection pit knee pit kneepit lime pit Lychpit marlpit micropit money pit mosh pit nanopit open-pit mine orchestra pit orchestra-pit passion pit pit-adder pit adder pit babe pit beef pit bike pit bing pitboard

Translations

Finnish: rumpusektio Finnish: syvältä French: fosse
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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