pit

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
pit1

▶noun

• 1 a large hole in the ground.

  ■ a mine or excavation for coal or minerals.

  ■ a sunken area in a workshop floor allowing access to a car's underside.

• 2 a hollow or indentation in a surface.

• 3 an area at the side of a track where racing cars are serviced and refuelled.

• 4 short for orchestra pit (see orchestra).

• 5 (the pit) Brit. dated the seating at the back of the stalls of a theatre.

• 6 a part of the floor of an exchange in which a particular stock or commodity is traded.

• 7 chiefly historical an enclosure in which animals are made to fight: a bear pit.

• 8 (the pit) literary hell.

  ■ (the pits) informal a very bad place or situation: this really is the pits!

• 9 Brit. informal a person's bed.

▶verb (pits, pitting, pitted)

• 1 (pit someone/thing against) set someone or something in conflict or competition with.

• 2 make a hollow or indentation in the surface of.

  ■ sink in or contract so as to form a hollow.

• 3 drive a racing car into the pit.

– phrases
the pit of the stomach the region of the lower abdomen.

– derivatives
pitted adjective.

– origin OE pytt, of W. Gmc origin, based on L. puteus ‘well, shaft’; sense 1 of the verb derives from the former practice of setting animals to fight each other in a pit.

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
pit2 chiefly N. Amer.

▶noun the stone of a fruit. ▶verb (pits, pitting, pitted) remove the pit from (fruit).

– derivatives
pitted adjective.

– origin C19: appar. from Du.; rel. to pith.