Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A worker employed inside a pit in various industrial operations, as in a coal mine.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See the extract.
  • noun One who works in a pit, as in coal-mining, in sawing timber, etc. Specifically
  • noun The man who looks after the pumping machinery within the shaft of a mine.
  • noun In machinery, the rod which connects a rotary with a reciprocating part, either for imparting motion to the latter or taking motion from it, as that which couples a crank with a saw-gate, or a steam-piston with its crank-shaft, etc. Also called connectingrod. See also cut under stone-breaker.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who works in a pit, as in mining, in sawing timber, etc.
  • noun (Mach.) The connecting rod in a sawmill; also, sometimes, a connecting rod in other machinery.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun One who works in a pit, as in mining, in sawing timber, etc.
  • noun A connecting rod in machinery, especially in a sawmill.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun someone who works in a coal mine
  • noun English educator who invented a system of phonetic shorthand (1813-1897)

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

pit +‎ man

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Examples

  • A pitman named Gregory Robbs or Bling Bling, for the gold he wears ran down the list of supplies that are typically used each Sunday morning: 2,200 eggs, 80 pounds of bacon, a few hundred pounds of pancake mix.

    Archive 2004-09-01 2004

  • The Old Hell Shaft, the pitman said, with a curse upon it, was worthy of its bad name to the last; for though Stephen could speak now, he believed it would soon be found to have mangled the life out of him.

    Hard Times 2002

  • The consultation ended in the men returning to the windlass, and the pitman going down again, carrying the wine and some other small matters with him.

    Hard Times 2002

  • As these were made, they were hung upon an arm of the pitman who had last come up, with instructions how to use them: and as he stood, shown by the light he carried, leaning his powerful loose hand upon one of the poles, and sometimes glancing down the pit, and sometimes glancing round upon the people, he was not the least conspicuous figure in the scene.

    Hard Times 2002

  • His curiosity satisfied, the pitman turned back to his stack of tires, and Al returned to his engine.

    Omnibus Lackey, Mercedes 1993

  • The Firestone pitman eyed Al's scarlet Nomex jumpsuit and raven hair with amusement.

    Omnibus Lackey, Mercedes 1993

  • They were joined soon by Andy Miller, once a service-station man in an Alabama town, but now a pitman in the steel mill.

    The Dollmaker Harriette Arnow 1954

  • A disk crank is used with suitable counterbalance, expressly adapted to the weight and speed of sash; a hammered steel wrist pin five inches in diameter, and a forged pitman of the most approved pattern, with best composition boxes.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 Various

  • Perth; according to his account, the Duke of Perth on reaching Biddick, took up his abode with a man named John Armstrong, a collier or pitman.

    Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 Volume III. Mrs. Thomson

  • Houghton-le-Spring, in the occupation of a pitman.

    Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 Volume III. Mrs. Thomson

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