English
pitch
Pronunciation Noun

pitch

  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.
Translations Translations Verb

pitch (pitches, present participle pitching; 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.
    • Soon he found / The welkin pitched with sullen cloud.
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, Australia, NZ) 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.
    • September 28, 1710, Joseph Addison, Whig-Examiner No. 2
      He lived at a time when learning was at its highest pitch.
    • 1748, David Hume, , 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
    • 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.
    • 1667, John Milton, “Book 2”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554 ↗:
      Driven headlong from the pitch of heaven, down / Into this deep.
  13. Prominence; importance.
    • c. 1599–1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act III, scene i]:
      Enterprises of great pitch and moment.
  14. (climbing) A section of a climb or rock face; specifically, the climbing distance between belays or stances.
  15. (caving) A vertical cave passage, only negotiable by using rope or ladders.
    The entrance pitch requires 30 metres of rope.
  16. (now British, regional) A person's or animal's height.
    • 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, 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 […] .
  17. (cricket) That point of the ground on which the ball pitches or lights when bowled.
  18. A descent; a fall; a thrusting down.
  19. 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
  20. (mining) The limit of ground set to a miner who receives a share of the ore taken out.
Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Verb

pitch (pitches, present participle pitching; 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.
    • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981 ↗, Genesis 31:25 ↗:
      Laban with his brethren pitched in the Mount of Gilead.
  9. (ambitransitive, 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.
    • the tree whereon they [the bees] pitch
  14. (with on or upon) To fix one's choice.
    • 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.
  17. (transitive, of a price, value) To set or fix.
  18. (transitive, card games, slang, of a card) To discard for some gain.
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  • French: s'accumuler
  • Italian: crescere, accumularsi
Translations Translations Translations Translations 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.
Translations Verb

pitch (pitches, present participle pitching; past and past participle pitched)

  1. (intransitive) To produce a note of a given pitch.
    • 1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter III, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, OCLC 884653065 ↗; republished New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953, →ISBN:
      […] now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music and the opera of voices pitches a key higher.
  2. (transitive) To fix or set the tone of.
    • 1955, Rex Stout, "Die Like a Dog", in Three Witnesses, October 1994 Bantam edition, ISBN 0553249592, pages 196–197:
      His "hello" was enough to recognize his voice by. I pitched mine low so he wouldn't know it.
Translations

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