... it's caught by the Matador, on his mat

[venta]

I'm confused about the word pitt. I think it's spelled with two t's.

The stone in an olive is called a pitt. A thing-for-getting-the-stones-out-of-olives is called an olive pitter.

Therefore a pitted olive is one which has had its stone removed.

I bought some olives which I was told weren't pitted. They have no stones.

Therefore a pitted olive is one which contains a pit - ie hasn't had its stone removed.

This could all be explained by me having just been misinformed about my olives. But I have heard people using the word pitted in both contexts.

Worse, the olives are upstairs in the fridge and no one will go and get them for me. It's a hard life.

Comments

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

It's a bugger. I've noticed a tendency in the last few years for dates to be sold as "stone-in" or "stone-out" dates rather than simply "stoned dates". This has robbed me of the opportunity to go "Oh wow, stoned dates man" every time I walk past them in the supermarket, which is probably a Good Thing.