Pit

How to spell pit

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pit

What does pit mean?

1. nounA hole or hollow dug into the ground, or a deep natural cavity.
2. nounThe hard stone or seed at the centre of certain fruits, such as a peach or cherry.
3. verbTo set someone or something in direct competition or conflict against another.

Pit in a sentence

• noun

  Workers dug a deep pit for the new foundations.

• noun

  She bit down hard on the cherry pit by accident.

• verb

  The contract would pit one supplier against another.

• noun

  The old coal pit had been closed for decades.

• noun

  Remove the pit from each peach before slicing it.

• verb

  The debate seemed designed to pit neighbour against neighbour.

Where does pit come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This short word reaches back to the Old English pytt, meaning a hole or a well dug in the ground. The Anglo-Saxons themselves borrowed it very early from the Latin puteus, which meant a well or a shaft sunk into the earth to reach water. That Latin word spread across the early West Germanic languages, which is why related forms turn up in Dutch (put) and German (Pfutze, a puddle). By the time of Middle English the sense had broadened from a literal dug shaft to almost any hollow or cavity, and later still to the hard inner stone of a fruit, an image of something buried inside. Because it has been an everyday English word for well over a thousand years, its plain three-letter spelling has never wavered, which is exactly why it gives modern writers no trouble at all.

How the word is built

• pit (a single root, no prefix or suffix; from Old English pytt)