pitched

1. 1
   verb

   Past tense and past participle of pitch.

   The salesman pitched his idea to a room full of investors.

   The ball was pitched low and inside, just missing the strike zone.

   Note

   One regular -ed form does double duty: the pitcher pitched the ball, the ball was pitched, he has pitched all season. Pitch covers very different verbs, including smearing with tar, darkening, throwing, a baseball pitcher's delivery, and tossing something away. Only the surrounding words tell you which pitched you are reading. The tar verb lives on in the "covered in pitch" adjective.

2. 2
   adjective

   Sloping rather than flat; having an incline that may be shallow, steep, or somewhere in between.

   Like the slope of a hillside compared with the level surface of a pond.

   The cabin's steeply pitched roof shed rain and snow with ease.

   A gently pitched lawn sloped down toward the lake.

   Similarsloping, sloped, slanted, angled

   Oppositeflat, level

   Note

   Builders and roofers use this word, and they often give the slope as a number. A patio can be pitched at a quarter-inch to the foot, with the construction pitched at plus a ratio. Adverbs grade it: steeply, gently, heavier. Snowy country tends to pitch its roofs harder so the snow slides off. Before a noun it sits plainly in front, as in a pitched roof.

3. 3
   adjective

   Having a particular tonal range, whether high, low, or in between.

   Like tuning each string of a guitar to its own note along the scale.

   The singer's high-pitched notes filled the concert hall.

   A finely pitched chord rang out from the strings.

   Similartuned

   Note

   On its own the word rarely appears. It needs a partner to say where the sound sits: high-pitched, low-pitched, finely pitched. Before a noun the compound is hyphenated (a high-pitched scream). The adjective itself is not graded with more or most. Writers raise or lower the modifier instead.

4. 4
   adjective

   Fought at an agreed time and place where opposing forces commit fully; (later especially) marked by sustained, intense fighting, military or otherwise.

   Like a championship final where both sides have prepared for a decisive, all-out clash.

   By dawn the rival forces were locked in a pitched battle along the ridge.

   The trial turned into a pitched legal fight that dragged on for months.

   Similarfierce, intense, bitter, furious

   Note

   Almost always fused with battle, pitched marks a fight both sides chose and stood to, unlike a chance clash. It has drifted toward simple intensity, so it now stretches to protests and courtrooms. It can even stand after its noun and take degree: nowhere was the battle more pitched than in Ocean City.

5. 5
   adjective

   Coated or covered in pitch, the dark, sticky tar-like substance used for sealing and waterproofing.

   The pitched seams of the wooden vessel held back the seawater.

   Sailors stored their catch in pitched casks to keep them watertight.

   Note

   This is the craftsman's sense, used for vessels and seams sealed against leaks. Charles Lamb's Essays of Elia (1823) gives a homely case: small beer smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured from, a leather jug made watertight with tar. Like the tonal sense, it does not take more or most. A thing is pitched or it is not.

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