Chapter Pita to Pitman of P by Webster's Dictionary (1913 Edition)

2. To light; to settle; to come to rest from flight.

The tree whereon they [the bees] pitch.

Mortimer.

3. To fix one's choise; — with on or upon.

Pitch upon the best course of life, and custom will render it the more easy.

Tillotson.

4. To plunge or fall; esp., to fall forward; to decline or slope; as, to pitch from a precipice; the vessel pitches in a heavy sea; the field pitches toward the east.

Pitch and pay, an old aphorism which inculcates ready-money payment, or payment on delivery of goods. Shak.

Pitch
(Pitch), n.

1. A throw; a toss; a cast, as of something from the hand; as, a good pitch in quoits.

Pitch and toss, a game played by tossing up a coin, and calling "Heads or tails;" hence: To play pitch and toss with (anything), to be careless or trust to luck about it. "To play pitch and toss with the property of the country." G. Eliot. — Pitch farthing. See Chuck farthing, under 5th Chuck.

2. (Cricket) That point of the ground on which the ball pitches or lights when bowled.

3. A point or peak; the extreme point or degree of elevation or depression; hence, a limit or bound.

Driven headlong from the pitch of heaven, down
Into this deep.

Milton.

Enterprises of great pitch and moment.

Shak.

To lowest pitch of abject fortune.

Milton.

He lived when learning was at its highest pitch.

Addison.

The exact pitch, or limits, where temperance ends.

Sharp.

4. Height; stature. [Obs.] Hudibras.

5. A descent; a fall; a thrusting down.

6. The point where a declivity begins; hence, the declivity itself; a descending slope; the degree or rate of descent or slope; slant; as, a steep pitch in the road; the pitch of a roof.

7. (Mus.) The relative acuteness or gravity of a tone, determined by the number of vibrations which produce it; the place of any tone upon a scale of high and low.

Musical tones with reference to absolute pitch, are named after the first seven letters of the alphabet; with reference to relative pitch, in a series of tones called the scale, they are called one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Eight is also one of a new scale an octave higher, as one is eight of a scale an octave lower.

8. (Mining) The limit of ground set to a miner who receives a share of the ore taken out.

9. (Mech.) (a) The distance from center to center of any two adjacent teeth of gearing, measured on the pitch line; — called also circular pitch. (b) The length, measured along the axis, of a complete turn of the thread of a screw, or of the helical lines of the blades of a screw propeller. (c) The distance between the centers of holes, as of rivet holes in boiler plates.