DCHP-1 Online

pitch ((n.))

• 1 n. a plot of land selected and occupied by a settler.

  • 1808  (1809)  As we approached the American boundary, we found a few settlements, what the Americans call a pitch.
  • 1928  He cleared off a pitch and started a little farm and worked in the woods in the winter. . . .

• 2a † n. a sloping stretch in the course of a stream.

  • 1811  (1897)  There are many below this which cannot properly be termed rapids, being merely pitches of the river, where the water runs over sloping beds of rocks and gravel.
  • 1916  The one hundred and ten miles of river between Hinton and Whitecourt was swift, but easily navigable, except for a series of short choppy "pitches," where high waves made some danger.
  • 1945  . . . in the main "pitch" (drop) of Lachine rapids, for instance, the dram bent to the shape of the great waves. . . .

• 2b n. a small waterfall or rapids.

  • 1834  (1926)  You cannot take a boat upon your shoulders and carry it over any obstacle such as Cameron's Falls or the pitch at Bobcajewonunk, and in coming up even a practicable rapid in a boat you may indeed put out your whole strength. . . .
  • 1871  (1872)  The salmon here stand almost always on the ledges of rocks at the top of the rapids and "pitches", as a small fall is called. Some of these pitches are too steep to pole up but most of them can be run. . . .
  • 1946  At the first rapid--a mean, rock-studded seventy-yard pitch--Mary caught her breath and exclaimed: "Surely, you can't take the canoe up there!"

• 3 n. Lumbering, Hist. of water in a stream, the point of greatest volume, as the peak of the spring runoff.

  • 1883  It is an anxious time . . . for upon a favorable and early start, with a good "pitch of water," may depend the whole success of the "drive" . . . If the ice "hangs on" too long the water may fall--in fact, it is falling every day after a certain pitch. . . .