pitcher

Etymology 1

pitch + -er

noun

  1. One who pitches anything, as hay, quoits, a ball, etc.
  2. (baseball, softball) The player who delivers the ball to the batter.
  3. (slang) A drug dealer.
    To the residents of Spanish Harlem, these pitchers embodied the drug trade at its most sinister; they were the dealers and pushers who were destroying their neighborhood. 2000, Michael Massing, The Fix, page 67
  4. (obsolete, UK, slang) One who puts counterfeit money into circulation.
    To discover […] how the honest poor are compelled to hob-and-nob with the “shoful pitcher” and the “gun,” it is necessary to visit the vast nursery-grounds of crime. 1863, Blanchard Jerrold, Signals of Distress in Refuges and Homes of Charity (etc.), page 2
  5. (chiefly US, colloquial) The top partner in a homosexual relationship or penetrator in a sexual encounter between two men.
  6. (obsolete) A sort of crowbar for digging.

Etymology 2

From Middle English picher, from Old French pichier, pechier (“small jug”), bichier (compare modern French pichet), from Late Latin or Medieval Latin pīcārium, alteration of bīcārium, itself possibly from bacarium, bacar or from Ancient Greek βῖκος (bîkos). Doublet of beaker.

noun

  1. A wide-mouthed, deep vessel for holding liquids, with a spout or protruding lip and a handle; a water jug or jar with a large ear or handle.
    At length, in a refrigerator, Eve finds a glass pitcher of water, pure, cold, and bright as ever gushed from a fountain among the hills. 1846, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The New Adam and Eve”, in Mosses from an Old Manse
  2. (botany) A tubular or cuplike appendage or expansion of the leaves of certain plants. See pitcher plant.

Etymology 3

noun

  1. Pronunciation spelling of picture, representing dialectal English.
    She's purtier'n uh pitcher, son, but what in th' name o' thunderin' snakes c'n you do with 'er in this here country? 1934, William Byron Mowery, Challenge of the North
    Nineteen sixty-nine, shore as hell, Clay Lawrence —that magazine had uh pitcher of ya—was uh All-American defensive back at the University of Missouri. 2015, Stephen Gresham, Rockabye Baby

Attribution / Disclaimer All definitions come directly from Wiktionary using the Wiktextract library. We do not edit or curate the definitions for any words, if you feel the definition listed is incorrect or offensive please suggest modifications directly to the source (wiktionary/pitcher), any changes made to the source will update on this page periodically.