... 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

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

No, these are transitive verbs. crater, mark and pitt are verbs as well as nouns:

I marked the spot -> I made a mark
I pitted the olive -> I removed the pitts

If "Those olives are pitted" means "they gots da pits" then similarly "This fish are filletted" would mean "they gots da bones", which is clearly not true. In means "they got da bones taken out"!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_corpse_/]

Or a boned quail would have bones as opposed to not, which once sufficiently confused a drunken me at a banquet that I ended up with metaphorical gravy on my chin.

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

Much better example!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, a boned bodice works like that, so I'd have thought a quail was bound to.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_corpse_/]

Mebbe when talking about bodices, 'boned' refers to the whale which is now just a big blob of blubbering blubber?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Awww, poor whale :(

I feel quite relieved my corset is steel-boned, and thus all I have to contend with is an image of a big blubbering blob of ore.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_corpse_/]

Now I have a vision of a steel (or adamantium) boned whale, in a Wolverine snickerty-snick stylee. Wonder where the claws would come from?

[wimble.livejournal.com]

That's really not the vision I got, with that prompting :)