pitch
/pɪt͡ʃ/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.43 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A dark, extremely viscous material still remaining after distilling crude oil or natural tar.
Countable; Uncountable
adj
Very dark black; pitch-black.
Example Sentences
- "It is hard to get this pitch off my hand."
- "Near-synonyms: tar, coal tar, asphalt, bitumen"
- "They put pitch on the mast to protect it."
- "The barrel was sealed with pitch."
- "It was pitch black because there was no moon."
- "“Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.”"
Etymology
From Middle English picche, piche, pich, from Old English piċ, from Proto-West Germanic *pik, from Latin pix. Cognate with Ancient Greek πίσσα (píssa, “pitch, tar”), Latin pīnus (“pine”). More at pine. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Pik (“pitch, tar”), Dutch pek (“pitch, tar”), German Low German Pick (“pitch, tar”), German Pech (“pitch, tar”), Catalan pega (“pitch”), Spanish pegar (“to stick, glue”), Franco-Provençal pouatche (“sap from a pine”) and French poix (“sap”). The adjective is probably back-formed from pitch-black, reinterpreting "pitch" as meaning "intense(ly)".
Origin
Word Breakdown
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Sports.