Emily Dickinson Lexicon

PIT, n. [Sax. pit or pyt; D. put; W. pyd; Ir. pit; L. puteus; Sans. put, puttu; W pydaw, a well or spring, an oozing fluid. It is uncertain whether this word originally signified a hollow place dug in the earth, or a natural spring of water and its basin. See Ar. فَبَطَ, to spring, and Class Bd, No. 58, 59, 63.]

1. An artificial cavity made in the earth by digging; a deep hole in the earth. – Bacon. Shak.
2. A deep place; an abyss; profundity. Into what pit thou seest / From what hight fallen. – Milton.
3. The grave. – Ps. xxviii and xxx.
4. The area for cock-fighting; whence the phrase, to fly the pit. – Locke. Hudibras.
5. The middle part of a theater. – Dryden.
6. The hollow of the body at the stomach. We say, the pit of the stomach.
7. The cavity under the shoulder; as, the arm-pit.
8. A dint made by impression on a soft substance, as by the finger, &c.
9. A little hollow in the flesh, made by a pustule, as in the small pocks.
10. A hollow place in the earth excavated for catching wild beasts; hence in Scripture, whatever insnares and brings into calamity or misery, from which it is difficult to escape. – Ps. vii. Prov. xxii and xxiii.
11. Great distress and misery, temporal, spiritual or eternal. – Is. xxxviii. Ps. xl.
12. Hell; as, the bottomless pit. – Rev. xx.
13. [Dutch.] The kernel of fruit, as of a cherry, &c.