pitch

English

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /pɪtʃ/
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Audio (AU)(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɪtʃ

Etymology 1

From Middle English picche, piche, pich, from Old English piċ, from Latin pix. Cognate with Dutch pek, German Pech, and Spanish pegar (“to stick, glue”).

Noun

pitch (countable and uncountable, plural pitches)

  1. A sticky, gummy substance secreted by trees; sap.
    It is hard to get this pitch off my hand.
  2. A dark, extremely viscous material remaining in still after distilling crude oil and tar.
    They put pitch on the mast to protect it.
    The barrel was sealed with pitch.
    It was pitch black because there was no moon.
  3. (geology) Pitchstone.

Hyponyms
Derived terms
Translations
pitchstone — see pitchstone

Verb

pitch (third-person singular simple present pitches, present participle pitching, simple past and past participle pitched)

  1. To cover or smear with pitch.
    • Book of Genesis 6:14, King James Version
      “Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.”
  2. To darken; to blacken; to obscure.
    • Addison
      Soon he found / The welkin pitched with sullen cloud.

Etymology 2

From Middle English picchen, pycchen (“to thrust in, fasten, settle”), an assibilated variant of Middle English picken, pikken (“to pick, pierce”). More at pick.

Noun

pitch (plural pitches)

  1. A throw; a toss; a cast, as of something from the hand.
    a good pitch in quoits
  2. (baseball) The act of pitching a baseball.
    The pitch was low and inside.
  3. (sports) (Britain, Australia, New Zealand) The field on which cricket, soccer, rugby or field hockey is played. (In cricket, the pitch is in the centre of the field; see cricket pitch.) Not used in America, where "field" is the preferred word.
    The teams met on the pitch.
  4. An effort to sell or promote something.
    He gave me a sales pitch.
  5. The distance between evenly spaced objects, e.g. the teeth of a saw or gear, the turns of a screw thread, the centres of holes, or letters in a monospace font.
    The pitch of pixels on the point scale is 72 pixels per inch.
    The pitch of this saw is perfect for that type of wood.
    A helical scan with a pitch of zero is equivalent to constant z-axis scanning.
  6. The angle at which an object sits.
    the pitch of the roof or haystack
  7. A level or degree, or (by extension), a peak or highest degree.
    • Addison
      He lived when learning was at its highest pitch.
    • 1748, David Hume, Enquiries concerning the human understanding and concerning the principles of moral, Oxford University Press (1973), section 11:
      But, except the mind be disordered by disease or madness, they never can arrive at such a pitch of vivacity
    • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 5, in The Celebrity:
      In the eyes of Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke the apotheosis of the Celebrity was complete. The people of Asquith were not only willing to attend the house-warming, but had been worked up to the pitch of eagerness.
    • 2014, James Booth, Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love (page 190)
      In this poem his 'vernacular' bluster and garish misrhymes build to a pitch of rowdy anarchy […]
  8. The rotation angle about the transverse axis.
    1. (nautical, aviation) The degree to which a vehicle, especially a ship or aircraft, rotates on such an axis, tilting its bow or nose up or down. Compare with roll, yaw, and heave.
      the pitch of an aircraft
    2. (aviation) A measure of the angle of attack of a propeller.
      The propeller blades' pitch went to zero as the engine was feathered.
  9. The place where a busker performs.
  10. An area in a market (or similar) allocated to a particular trader.
  11. An area on a campsite intended for occupation by a single tent, caravan or similar.
  12. A point or peak; the extreme point of elevation or depression.
    • John Milton
      Driven headlong from the pitch of heaven, down / Into this deep.
    • William Shakespeare
      Enterprises of great pitch and moment.
    • 2014, John Narborough, ‎Abel Tasman, ‎& John Wood, An Account of Several Late Voyages and Discoveries to the South and North, →ISBN:
      From the pitch of Cape-Fraward, to the pitch of Cape-Holland, the Streight lies in the Channel West and by North, nearest, and is distant full five Leagues;
  13. (climbing) A section of a climb or rock face; specifically, the climbing distance between belays or stances.
  14. (caving) A vertical cave passage, only negotiable by using rope or ladders.
    The entrance pitch requires 30 metres of rope.
  15. (now Britain, regional) A person or animal's height.
    • 1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Printed by Iohn Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 216894069; The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd corrected and augmented edition, Oxford: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, 1624, OCLC 54573970, partition II, section 3, member 2:
      Alba the emperor was crook-backed, Epictetus lame; that great Alexander a little man of stature, Augustus Cæsar of the same pitch […].
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Hudibras to this entry?)
  16. (cricket) That point of the ground on which the ball pitches or lights when bowled.
  17. A descent; a fall; a thrusting down.
  18. The point where a declivity begins; hence, the declivity itself; a descending slope; the degree or rate of descent or slope; slant.
    a steep pitch in the road;  the pitch of a roof
  19. (mining) The limit of ground set to a miner who receives a share of the ore taken out.
Derived terms
Translations

Verb

pitch (third-person singular simple present pitches, present participle pitching, simple past and past participle pitched)

  1. (transitive) To throw.
    He pitched the horseshoe.
  2. (transitive or intransitive, baseball) To throw (the ball) toward a batter at home plate.
    (transitive) The hurler pitched a curveball.
    (intransitive) He pitched high and inside.
  3. (intransitive, baseball) To play baseball in the position of pitcher.
    Bob pitches today.
  4. (transitive) To throw away; discard.
    He pitched the candy wrapper.
  5. (transitive) To promote, advertise, or attempt to sell.
    He pitched the idea for months with no takers.
  6. (transitive) To deliver in a certain tone or style, or with a certain audience in mind.
    At which level should I pitch my presentation?
  7. (transitive) To assemble or erect (a tent).
    Pitch the tent over there.
  8. (intransitive) To fix or place a tent or temporary habitation; to encamp.
    • Bible, Genesis xxxi. 25
      Laban with his brethren pitched in the Mount of Gilead.
  9. (transitive, intransitive, aviation or nautical) To move so that the front of an aircraft or ship goes alternatively up and down.
    (transitive) The typhoon pitched the deck of the ship.
    (intransitive) The airplane pitched.
  10. (transitive, golf) To play a short, high, lofty shot that lands with backspin.
    The only way to get on the green from here is to pitch the ball over the bunker.
  11. (intransitive, cricket) To bounce on the playing surface.
    The ball pitched well short of the batsman.
  12. (intransitive, Bristol, of snow) To settle and build up, without melting.
  13. (intransitive, archaic) To alight; to settle; to come to rest from flight.
    • Mortimer
      the tree whereon they [the bees] pitch
  14. (with on or upon) To fix one's choice.
    • Tillotson
      Pitch upon the best course of life, and custom will render it the more easy.
  15. (intransitive) To plunge or fall; especially, to fall forward; to decline or slope.
    to pitch from a precipice
    The field pitches toward the east.
  16. (transitive, of an embankment, roadway) To set, face, or pave with rubble or undressed stones.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Knight to this entry?)
  17. (transitive, of a price, value) To set or fix.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Shakespeare to this entry?)
  18. (transitive, card games, slang, of a card) To discard for some gain.
Derived terms
Terms derived from pitch (verb)
Translations

Etymology 3

Unknown. Perhaps related to the above sense of level or degree, or influenced by it.

Noun

pitch (plural pitches)

  1. (music, phonetics) The perceived frequency of a sound or note.
    The pitch of middle "C" is familiar to many musicians.
  2. (music) In an a cappella group, the singer responsible for singing a note for the other members to tune themselves by.
    Bob, our pitch, let out a clear middle "C" and our conductor gave the signal to start.
Derived terms
Translations

Verb

pitch (third-person singular simple present pitches, present participle pitching, simple past and past participle pitched)

  1. (intransitive) To produce a note of a given pitch.
  2. (transitive) To fix or set the tone of.
    • 1955, Rex Stout, "Die Like a Dog", in Three Witnesses, October 1994 Bantam edition, →ISBN, pages 196–197:
      His "hello" was enough to recognize his voice by. I pitched mine low so he wouldn't know it.
Translations

References
  • pitch in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
  • Notes:
  1. Oxford-Paravia Concise - Dizionario Inglese-Italiano e Italiano-Inglese (in collaborazione con Oxford University Press). Edited by Maria Cristina Bareggi. Torino: Paravia, 2003. →ISBN. Online version here

French

Pronunciation
  • Audio(file)

Noun

pitch m (plural pitchs)

  1. pitch (sales patter, inclination)

Italian

Noun

pitch m (plural pitch)

  1. (cricket) cricket pitch
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