Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also sawpit) the vagina.

1568		T. Buckley ‘Libel of Oxford’ in May & Bryson Verse Libel 312: A Sammon in a Sawyer’s pitt / Did seeke to scape the fysher’s ginn.
1594		Gesta Grayorum (1688) 19: Three hundred able and sufficient labouring Men, [...] also shall repair and mend all common High and Low-Ways, by laying stones in the Pits and naughty places.
1639		J. Taylor Crabtree Lectures 112: I call him Capon; but said the other, never Cocke of the game [...] no I will see him in the pit first, which word may carry a double meaning.
1648		R. Herrick ‘Cherry-pit’ Hesperides 17: Julia and I [...] Playing for sport, at Cherry-pit: / She threw; I cast; and having thrown, / I got the Pit, and she the Stone.
1650		‘Madame Be Covered’ in Farmer Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) II 39: You not to one, but, unto all, / Shew both your hills and naked pit.
1674		F. Fane ‘Iter Occidentale’ Harleian Mss. 7319.20: That glorious Name, That moved thee to divest thy covering Carnall Sin Shelt’ring Smock, and Shew thy Pit Infernall.
1686		Dorset ‘A Faithful Catalogue of our most Eminent Ninnies’ in Works of Rochester, Roscommon, Dorset (1720) 32: In some deep Saw-pit, both their Noddles hide.
c.1720		‘The Original black Joke. Sent from Dublin’ 🎵 The Lawyer his clients cause wd quit / To dip his pen in the bottomless pit / Of a Coal black &c.
1748–49		Cleland Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1985) 32: His red-headed champion that had so lately fled the pit [...] was now recover’d to the top of its condition.
1788		Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies 93: She is very tall, and the pit in her black heath is said to have a considerable profundity.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1941		in G. Legman Limerick (1953) 170: An ignorant virgin of Dee / Entertained a man’s cock just to see / If the darn thing would fit— / It went off in her pit, / And she cried, ‘Hey, that’s no place to pee!’.
1980		Maledicta IV:2 (Winter) 182: The simplest words in common use for this ‘nasty thing’ [...] are those accepting the female sexual apparatus as a simple receptacle. These include [...] pit, placket and many others.

2. (UK Und.) the common grave, beneath the gallows, in which those who fail to pay a burial fee of 6s 8d are buried after their remains have been cut down.

1589		A. Dowriche French Hist. in Wynne-Davies Women Poets of the Renaissance (1998) 24: In prison where they were, / The thieves and bloody murderers did find more favour there, / For they that death deserved were taken from their clink, / And in the cold and ugly pits which breathed a deadly stink / These men were thrust and bound.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Pit c. the hole under the Gallows into which those that Pay not the Fee, viz. 6s 8d, are cast and Buried.
1725		New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue .
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.

3. a breast pocket; thus (UK Und.) pit-worker n., a pickpocket who specializes in robbing inside pockets.

1811		Lex. Balatronicum n.p.: Pit. A watch fob. He drew a rare thimble from the swell’s pit. He took a handsome watch from the gentleman’s fob.
1856		Manchester Wkly Times 23 Aug. 11/3: They assemble to share their spoils [...] the thimbles (watches) [...] from the pits (breast pockets) or slashes (outside coat pocket).
1859		Matsell Vocabulum.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1930		(con. 1910s) D. Mackenzie Hell’s Kitchen 41: ‘In the pit,’ says one, meaning that the article they are after is in the inside coat pocket.
1935		Thieves Slang ms list from District Police Training Centre, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwicks 8: Pit: Inside of pocket.
1938		F.D. Sharpe Sharpe of the Flying Squad 332: pit (the) : The inside jacket pocket.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 158/2: Pit. (Among pickpockets) The vest pocket; or, less frequently, the inside breast pocket of coat.
1968		J. Alard He Who Shoots Last 80: [of a wallet] As the Father vigorously shook hands, he cased the wallet [...] indicating it was in the right pitt, or pocket.
1977		D. Powis Signs of Crime 196: Pit An inside pocket in a jacket.

4. (UK Und.) a wallet [from sense 3].

1981

(con. 1900–30) A. Harding in Samuel East End Und. 283: Pit – Wallet. ‘There’s more money in the pit, who wants to be a miner.’.

5. as a place, usu. untidy, dirty.

6. (orig. US) in fig. use, as the pits.

7. an armpit, with an implication of body odour; usu. in pl.; thus the pits, body odour.

1955		J.P. Donleavy Ginger Man (1958) 285: Put a little touch of Miss Frost’s mum in the pits.
1965		see sense 6a.
1967–8		Baker et al. CUSS 172: Pit A. Armpit. B. Armpit stain. C. Body odor.
1969		Current Sl. IV:1 12: Pit, n. Perspiration odor.
1975		G. Underwood ‘Razorback Sl.’ in AS L:1/2 54: pits ‘body odor’.
1979		B. Gutcheon New Girls (1982) 129: Okay, just wait till I finish shaving my pits.
1989		Kirk & Madsen After The Ball 305: Ripe pits sourballs [...] pit sniffin’.
1993		K. Lette Foetal Attraction (1994) 32: What was it, Maddy pondered, that the shopping urge always struck the day you [...] hadn’t shaved your pits?
2000		Guardian G2 24 May 11: Spray your pits and wash your bits.

8. (drugs) the place on the inside of the elbow that is often used for injections.

1969		R.R. Lingeman Drugs from A to Z (1970) 211: pit The main vein leading to the heart, considered the ‘original main line’ and the best vein to inject by some addicts.
1971		E.E. Landy Underground Dict. (1972).
1989		(con. 1939–59) Courtwright & Des Jarlais Addicts Who Survived 114: I shot in this one vein from here to here [points to arm] for twenty years; that’s what you call ‘the pit’.

9. (orig. US) a pit bull terrier [abbr.].

2001		(con. 1964–8) J. Ellroy Cold Six Thousand 47: The pit licked his hand. Wayne scratched his ears.
2012		‘Dutch’ ? (Pronounced Que) [ebook] The pit looked offical, but Lil’ B knew dogs like the back of his hand [...] the pit didn’t come from a strong bloodline.
2023		F. Bill Back to the Dirt 67: One chewed ear stuck straight up, the other flopped down as though it were broken. Its head was like a large mallet. It was an old pit, keeping watch for its owner.