pit
part of speech
noun (a pit, pits); verb (pit, pits, pitted, pitting)
meaning for a pupil
1) A pit is a large hole in the ground, dug by people or made naturally. tree →
2) A pit is a coal mine (UK). tree →
3) (US, Canada) A pit is the hard stone in the middle of some fruits, like a peach or cherry. tree →
4) In motor racing, the pits are the place beside the track where cars stop for fuel and new tyres. tree →
5) (slang, UK) A very messy room or place can be called a pit. tree →
6) To pit one person against another is to make them compete or fight. tree →
7) The pit of your stomach is the deep inside of your belly, where you feel fear. tree →
8) Pit can also mean the hollow place under your arm, the armpit. tree →
sense in the lessons
In history lessons pits are coal mines where miners (and once even children) worked; in science, pits and craters form in rock and on the Moon. In stories a pit can be a trap, and in the Bible Joseph's brothers threw him into a pit. In everyday life, "the pits" means the very worst. Phrases: "fire pit", "sand pit", "orchestra pit", "the pits", "a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach", "pit against".
examples
- The workers dug a deep pit for the new pond. tree →
- (Bible) Joseph's brothers threw him into a dry pit. tree →
- My great-grandad worked down the pit in Wales. tree →
- (US) Be careful not to swallow the cherry pit. tree →
- The racing car came into the pits for new tyres. tree →
- The final pitted our school against last year's champions. tree →
- I had a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach before the test. tree →
- (informal) Losing the match in the last minute was the pits. tree →
- (slang, UK) Your bedroom is a total pit — tidy it! tree →
- “Here, in my left arm-pit,” answered he. tree →
note
Countable noun: a pit, pits. Past of the verb: pitted (double t). A "pitted" olive has had its stone removed; "pitted" skin or metal has many small holes. In British English the fruit centre is usually a "stone", in American English a "pit". "The pits" (plural, informal) means terrible.
In the corpora
- Pit vipers such as rattlesnakes have heat-sensing pits on their faces that find warm-blooded prey in total darkness.
- Badgers are very clean: they drag in fresh grass and bracken for bedding and dig special toilet pits away from the sett.
- Open-pit mines dig huge holes, some over a kilometre deep, and leave mountains of waste rock.
- The brothers threw Joseph into a pit, sold him to traders and told their father he had been killed by an animal.
- and they took him, and cast him into the pit — and the pit was empty, there was no water in it.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «pit» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.