pitchy en · ADJ · etymology 1
Pronunciation
- (Southern-England) audio
- /ˈpɪt͡ʃi/
Etymology
From Middle English pycchy, pychy, equivalent to pitch + -y.
Meanings
- Of, pertaining to, or resembling pitch.
-
Very dark black; pitch-black.
To make it worse, something went wrong wit the Glow-worm's lighting system, and the room was in pitchy darkness.
1961, Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach, Knopf, page 44:Mancunium, Manceaster, what we now call Manchester, spins no cotton […] The Creek of the Mersey gurgles, twice in the four-and-twenty hours, with eddying brine, clangorous with sea-fowl; and is a Lither-Pool, a lazy or sullen Pool, no monstrous pitchy City, and Seahaven of the world!
1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “ch. 5, Twelfth Century”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book II (The Ancient Monk):But each time the night over the hills remained pitchy black. Then the rain came on more heavily again.
1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 215:In front of me the road became pitchy black as though it was tarred, and I saw a contorted shape lying across the pathway.
1898, H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, page 280:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| pitchier | Degree=Cmp | lexicographic | |
| pitchiest | Degree=Sup | lexicographic |
Deriveds
Translations (3)
pl smołowaty (resembling tar) · pl gagatowy (pitch-black) · pl smołowy (pitch-black)