the pits

1. 1.

   any place of pain and turmoil

   “the hell of battle”

   “the inferno of the engine room”

   “when you're alone Christmas is the pits”

   Synonymshellhell on earthhellholesnake pitinferno

   Broaderregion

Questions about the pits

What does the pits mean?

the pits means "any place of pain and turmoil".

What is another word for the pits?

Close synonyms include hell, hell on earth, hellhole, snake pit, inferno. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is the pits a common word?

the pits is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.