different between pitchy vs cimmerian

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?p?t?i/
• Rhymes: -?t?i

Etymology 1

From Middle English pycchy, pychy, equivalent to pitch +? -y.

Adjective

pitchy (comparative pitchier, superlative pitchiest)

1. Of, pertaining to, or resembling pitch.
2. Very dark black; pitch-black.
   • 1843, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, book 2, ch. 5, Twelfth Century

     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!

Etymology 2

From pitch +? -y. (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Adjective

pitchy (comparative pitchier, superlative pitchiest)

1. (music) Off pitch; out of tune.

Anagrams

• phytic

English

Etymology

From Cimmerian.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /s??m?????n/

Adjective

cimmerian (comparative more cimmerian, superlative most cimmerian)

1. (poetic) perpetually dark or gloomy
   • 1631: Milton, L'Allegro

     There, under ebon shades... in dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

   • 1740: George Frideric Handel and Charles Jennens, L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato

     As ragged as thy locks,
     In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

   • 1820: Thomas Love Peacock, The Four Ages of Poetry

     ...the darkness of antiquated barbarism, in which he buries himself like a mole, to throw up the barren hillocks of his Cimmerian labours.

   • 1894, Ivan Dexter, Talmud: A Strange Narrative of Central Australia, published in serial form in Port Adelaide News and Lefevre's Peninsula Advertiser (SA), Chapter VI, [1]

     The glimpse of blue vault far above only heightened the cimmerian gloom of the canyon, and the frowning rocks, which rose abruptly gave one the impression that they were on the point of crashing into the ravine.

2. (figuratively) mentally dark; ignorant
   • 1770: Baron D'Holbach, The System of Nature

     The source of man’s unhappiness is his ignorance of Nature.... To remove this Cimmerian darkness... requires the clue of Ariadne.

Derived terms

• cimmerianism
• cimmerianize

Translations