different between black vs pitch

English

Alternative forms

• Black (race-related)

Pronunciation

• enPR: bl?k, IPA^(key): /blæk/
• (UK) IPA^(key): /blak/
• Rhymes: -æk

Etymology

From Middle English blak, black, blake, from Old English blæc (“black, dark", also "ink”), from Proto-Germanic *blakaz (“burnt”) (compare Dutch blaken (“to burn”), Low German blak, black (“blackness, black paint, (black) ink”), Old High German blah (“black”)), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *b?leg- (“to burn, shine”) (compare Latin flagr?re (“to burn”), Ancient Greek ???? (phlóx, “flame”), Sanskrit ???? (bharga, “radiance”)). More at bleach.

Adjective

black (comparative blacker or more black, superlative blackest or most black)

1. (of an object) Absorbing all light and reflecting none; dark and hueless.
2. (of a place, etc) Without light.
3. (sometimes capitalized) Belonging to or descended from any of various (African, Aboriginal, etc) ethnic groups which typically have dark pigmentation of the skin. (See usage notes below.)
   • 1975 May, Terry Hodges, in Ebony, page 10:

     I am a young, light-skinned black woman, and truer words were never written of the problem we light-skinned blacks have had to live with. The article explains in-depth what it's like.
4. (chiefly historical) Designated for use by those ethnic groups.

   black drinking fountain; black hospital

5. (card games, of a card) Of the spades or clubs suits. Compare red (“of the hearts or diamonds suit”)

   I was dealt two red queens, and he got one of the black queens.

6. Bad; evil; ill-omened.
   • 1655, Benjamin Needler, Expository notes, with practical observations; towards the opening of the five first chapters of the first book of Moses called Genesis. London: N. Webb and W. Grantham, page 168.

     ...what a black day would that be, when the Ordinances of Jesus Christ should as it were be excommunicated, and cast out of the Church of Christ.
7. Expressing menace, or discontent; threatening; sullen.

   He shot her a black look.

8. (of objects, markets, etc) Illegitimate, illegal or disgraced.
   • 1866, The Contemporary Review, London: A. Strahan, page 338.

     Foodstuffs were rationed and, as in other countries in a similar situation, the black market was flourishing.

9. (Ireland, informal) Overcrowded.
10. (of coffee or tea) Without any cream, milk, or creamer.

    Jim drinks his coffee black, but Ellen prefers it with creamer.

11. (board games, chess) Of or relating to the playing pieces of a board game deemed to belong to the "black" set (in chess the set used by the player who moves second) (often regardless of the pieces' actual colour).

    The black pieces in this chess set are made of dark blue glass.

12. (typography) Said of a symbol or character that is solid, filled with color. Compare white (“said of a character or symbol outline, not filled with color”).

    Compare two Unicode symbols: ? = "WHITE RIGHT POINTING INDEX"; ? = BLACK RIGHT POINTING INDEX

13. (politics) Related to the Christian Democratic Union of Germany.

    After the election, the parties united in a black-yellow alliance.

14. Clandestine; relating to a political, military, or espionage operation or site, the existence or details of which is withheld from the general public.

    5 percent of the Defense Department funding will go to black projects.

    black operations/black ops, black room, black site

15. Occult; relating to something (such as mystical or magical knowledge) which is unknown to or kept secret from the general public.
    • 2014, J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (?ISBN), page 168:

      But a hel-rúne was one who knew secret black knowledge – and the association of hell with the dead shows that the gloss in O.H.G. 'necromancia' is very close.

16. (Ireland, now derogatory) Protestant, often with the implication of being militantly pro-British or anti-Catholic. (Compare blackmouth ("Presbyterian").)

    the Black North (Ulster)

    the Royal Black Institution

    • 1812, Edward Wakefield, An Account of Ireland, Statistical and Political Vol. 2, p. 737:

      There is a district, comprehending Donegal, the interior of the county of Derry, and the western side of Tyrone, which is emphatically called by the people "the Black North," an expression not meant, as I conceive, to mark its greater exposure to the westerly winds, but rather its dreary aspect.

    • 1841 March 20, "Intelligence; Catholicity in Ulster" Catholic Herald (Bengal), Vol. 2 No. 1, p. 27:

      Even in the "black North"—in " Protestant Ulster"—Catholicity is progressing at a rate that must strike terror into its enemies, and impart pride and hope to the professors of the faith of our sainted forefathers.

    • 1886 Thomas Power O'Connor, The Parnell Movement: With a Sketch of Irish Parties from 1843, page 520:

      To the southern Nationalist the north was chiefly known as the home of the most rabid religious and political intolerance perhaps in the whole Christian world; it was designated by the comprehensive title of the 'Black North.'

    • 1914 May 27, "Review of The North Afire by W. Douglas Newton", The Sketch: A Journal of Art and Actuality, volume 86, page t:

      Now April's brother, once also holding a commission in that regiment, was an Ulster Volunteer, her father a staunch, black Protestant, her family tremulously "loyal" to the country whose Parliament was turning them out of its councils.

    • 1985 April, J. A. Weaver, "John Henry Biggart 1905-1979 — A portrait in respect and affection", Ulster Medical Journal, volume 54, number 1, page 1:

      He [Sir John Henry Biggart] was personally amused at having once been called "a black bastard".

    • 2007 September 6, Fintan O'Toole, "Diary", London Review of Books volume 29, number 17, page 35:

      He had been playing Gaelic football for Lisnaskea Emmets, his local team in County Fermanagh, against a team from nearby Brookeborough, when someone from the opposing team called him a ‘black cunt’. ‘Black’, in this case, was a reference not to the colour of his skin but to his religion. It is short for ‘Black Protestant’, a long-standing term of sectarian abuse.

17. Having one or more features (hair, fur, armour, clothes, bark, etc) that is dark (or black); in taxonomy, especially: dark in comparison to another species with the same base name.

    black birch, black locust, black rhino

    the black knight, black bile

18. Foul; dirty.

Usage notes

• In the United States, black typically refers to people of African descent, including indirect African descent via the Caribbean, including those with light skin. In the United Kingdom, black often includes dark-skinned Asians. In Australian, Aboriginal Australians are often referred to as or identify as black. In New Zealand, Maoris are sometimes referred to as or identify as black.
• Some style guides recommend capitalizing Black in reference to the racial group, while others advise using lowercase (black); lowercase is more common.

Synonyms

• (dark and colourless): dark; swart; see also Thesaurus:black
• (without light): dark, gloomy, pitch-black

Antonyms

• (dark and colourless): white, nonblack, unblack
• (without light): bright, illuminated, lit

Derived terms

(taxonomy: having dark features):

(other senses):

Related terms

Descendants

• Bislama: blak
• Tok Pisin: blak
• Torres Strait Creole: blaik
• ? Dutch: black
• ? French: black
• ? Greek: ??????? (blákis)

Translations

See black/translations § Adjective.

Noun

black (countable and uncountable, plural blacks)

1. (countable and uncountable) The colour/color perceived in the absence of light, but also when no light is reflected, but rather absorbed.
2. (countable and uncountable) A black dye or pigment.
3. (countable) A pen, pencil, crayon, etc., made of black pigment.
4. (in the plural) Black cloth hung up at funerals.
   • 1625, Francis Bacon, "Of Death", Essays:

     Groans, and convulsions, and a discolored face, and friends weeping, and blacks, and obsequies, and the like, show death terrible.

5. (sometimes capitalised, countable) A member of descendant of any of various (African, Aboriginal, etc) ethnic groups which typically have dark pigmentation of the skin. (See usage notes above.)
6. (informal) Blackness, the condition of belonging to or being descended from one of these ethnic groups.

7. (billiards, snooker, pool, countable) The black ball.
8. (baseball, countable) The edge of home plate.
9. (Britain, countable) A type of firecracker that is really more dark brown in colour.
10. (informal, countable) Blackcurrant syrup (in mixed drinks, e.g. snakebite and black, cider and black).
11. (in chess and similar games, countable) The person playing with the black set of pieces.

    At this point black makes a disastrous move.

12. (countable) Something, or a part of a thing, which is black.
    • 1644, Kenelm Digby, Two Treatises

      the black or sight of the eye

13. (obsolete, countable) A stain; a spot.
    • 1619, William Rowley, All's Lost by Lust

      defiling her white lawn of chastity with ugly blacks of lust

14. A dark smut fungus, harmful to wheat.
15. (US, slang) Marijuana.

Synonyms

• (colour or absence of light):
  • blackness
• (person):
  • (standard) African American (in the US), Afro-American (in the US), person of African descent
  • (usually derogatory or historical): Negro, colored
  • (derogatory): coon, darkie or darky, nigger

Antonyms

• (colour, dye, pen): white

Derived terms

Descendants

• ? Japanese: ???? (burakku)
• ? Volapük: bläg

Translations

See black/translations § Noun.

Verb

black (third-person singular simple present blacks, present participle blacking, simple past and past participle blacked)

1. (transitive) To make black; to blacken.
   • 1859, Oliver Optic, Poor and Proud; or, The Fortunes of Katy Redburn, a Story for Young Folks [5]

     "I don't want to fight; but you are a mean, dirty blackguard, or you wouldn't have treated a girl like that," replied Tommy, standing as stiff as a stake before the bully.

     "Say that again, and I'll black your eye for you."

   • 1911, Edna Ferber, Buttered Side Down [6]

     Ted, you can black your face, and dye your hair, and squint, and some fine day, sooner or later, somebody'll come along and blab the whole thing.

   • 1922, John Galsworthy, A Family Man: In Three Acts [7]

     I saw red, and instead of a cab I fetched that policeman. Of course father did black his eye.

2. (transitive) To apply blacking to (something).
   • 1853, Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin [8]

     […] he must catch, curry, and saddle his own horse; he must black his own brogans (for he will not be able to buy boots).

   • 1861, George William Curtis, Trumps: A Novel [9]

     But in a moment he went to Greenidge's bedside, and said, shyly, in a low voice, "Shall I black your boots for you?"

   • 1911, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson [10]

     Loving you, I could conceive no life sweeter than hers — to be always near you; to black your boots, carry up your coals, scrub your doorstep; always to be working for you, hard and humbly and without thanks.

3. (Britain, transitive) To boycott, usually as part of an industrial dispute.
   • 2003, Alun Howkins, The Death of Rural England (page 175)

     The plants were blacked by the Transport and General Workers' Union and a consumer boycott was organised; both activities contributed to what the union saw as a victory.

Synonyms

• (make black): blacken, darken, swarten
• (boycott): blackball, blacklist; see also Thesaurus:boycott

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• monochrome
• Appendix:Word formation verb -en noun -ness

References

• black at OneLook Dictionary Search
• black in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
• black in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Further reading

• black on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Black on Wikisource.Wikisource

French

Etymology

Borrowed from English black.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /blak/

Adjective

black (plural blacks)

1. relating to a black person or culture

   Synonym: noir

Noun

black m or f (plural blacks)

1. black person

   Synonym: noir

Middle English

Adjective

black

1. Alternative form of blak

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /p?t?/
• Rhymes: -?t?

Etymology 1

From Middle English picche, piche, pich, from Old English pi?, 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.

2. A dark, extremely viscous material remaining in still after distilling crude oil and tar.

3. (geology) Pitchstone.

Derived terms

• pitch-black
• pitchblende
• pitch-dark
• pitch darkness
• pitch-tar

Translations

Descendants

• ? Galician: piche
• ? Portuguese: piche

See also

• piceous

Verb

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

1. To cover or smear with pitch.

   • “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.
   • 1704 (published), year written unknown, John Dryden, On the Death of Amyntas

     Soon he found / The welkin pitch'd with sullen clouds.

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.

3. (baseball) The act of pitching a baseball.

4. (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.

5. An effort to sell or promote something.

6. 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.

   A helical scan with a pitch of zero is equivalent to constant z-axis scanning.

7. The angle at which an object sits.

8. 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, 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

   • 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 […]

9. 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.

   2. (aviation) A measure of the angle of attack of a propeller.

10. An area in a market (or similar) allocated to a particular trader.
11. (by extension) The place where a busker performs, a prostitute solicits clients, or an illegal gambling game etc. is set up before the public.
    • 1975, Tom A. Cullen, The Prostitutes' Padre (page 94)

      Another reason is that the prostitute who makes her pitch at Marble Arch stands a chance of being picked up by an out-of-town business man stopping at one of the hotels in the vicinity, and of being treated to a steak dinner […]

12. An area on a campsite intended for occupation by a single tent, caravan or similar.
13. A point or peak; the extreme point of elevation or depression.
14. Prominence; importance.
15. (climbing) A section of a climb or rock face; specifically, the climbing distance between belays or stances.
    • 1967, Anthony Greenbank, Instructions in Mountaineering (page 84)

      You lead "through" instead — your companion leads a pitch, then you join him. But instead of swapping over at the ice axe belay, you carry on in the lead, cutting or kicking steps until you are about twenty feet above.

16. (caving) A vertical cave passage, only negotiable by using rope or ladders.

17. (now Britain, regional) A person's or animal's height.
18. (cricket) That point of the ground on which the ball pitches or lights when bowled.
19. A descent; a fall; a thrusting down.
20. The point where a declivity begins; hence, the declivity itself; a descending slope; the degree or rate of descent or slope; slant.

21. (mining) The limit of ground set to a miner who receives a share of the ore taken out.

Hyponyms

• football pitch

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

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

2. (transitive) To throw.

4. (transitive or intransitive, baseball) To throw (the ball) toward a batter at home plate.

5. (intransitive, baseball) To play baseball in the position of pitcher.

6. (transitive) To throw away; discard.

7. (transitive) To promote, advertise, or attempt to sell.

8. (transitive) To deliver in a certain tone or style, or with a certain audience in mind.

9. (transitive) To assemble or erect (a tent).

10. (intransitive) To fix or place a tent or temporary habitation; to encamp.

    • Laban with his brethren pitched in the Mount of Gilead.

11. (transitive, intransitive, aviation or nautical) To move so that the front of an aircraft or boat goes alternatively up and down.

12. (transitive, golf) To play a short, high, lofty shot that lands with backspin.

13. (intransitive, cricket) To bounce on the playing surface.

14. (intransitive, Bristol, of snow) To settle and build up, without melting.
15. (intransitive, archaic) To alight; to settle; to come to rest from flight.

    • the tree whereon they [the bees] pitch

16. (with on or upon) To fix one's choice.
    • a. 1694, John Tillotson, The Precepts of Christianity not grievous

      Pitch upon the best course of life, and custom will render it the more easy.
17. (intransitive) To plunge or fall; especially, to fall forward; to decline or slope.

18. (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?)

19. (transitive, of a price, value) To set or fix.
20. (transitive, card games, slang, of a card) To discard for some gain.

Derived terms

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.

   • […] 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, 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.
• pitch on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

French

Pronunciation

Noun

pitch m (plural pitchs)

1. pitch (sales patter, inclination)

Italian

Noun

pitch m (plural pitch)

1. (cricket) cricket pitch