Unpitted

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Having had its pits or stones removed, as with fruit that has been prepared for eating or cooking
2. Describing a surface or object that is free of holes, dents, or hollows in its texture
3. Lacking pits, such as a smooth fruit whose stone or seed has been taken out

Etymology: "Unpitted" is a plain formation: the prefix "un-", meaning "not" or "reversing an action," attached to "pitted," the past participle of "pit" used as a verb. To pit fruit is to remove its stones or seeds, so "unpitted" describes fruit that still has those pits in place, or, more often, is a label for fruit sold or prepared without them. The base "pitted" traces the idea of a hard central stone in fruit, the "pit," back to a Germanic and ultimately Old English-era sense of a hollow or hole, which is where the "pit" as a kernel comes from. The verb sense of removing those pits developed from that noun, so the whole word is built from two common English parts with no special history of its own.

Antonyms: pitted