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pit-house

pit-house

1 8.6
A shelter dug partly into the ground with a roof to live in or keep animals
  • noun
  • /ˈpɪtˌhaʊs/
  • Specialized
translation icon : casa de hoyo
  • Thomas led a crew on a two-day hike to the 11,000-foot summit, where he discovered pit-house remains, huge stone slabs, and hundreds of tiny arrowheads.
  • pit-house site

Examples

  • Over the past eight field seasons, the archaeologists have uncovered three rectangular pit houses, a cattle barn, and a small hall.

    Academic text (2007)
  • PHOTO (COLOR): Cattle rancher Waldo Wilcox, standing among the remains of a pit house, protected a wealth of Fremont Indian sites on his Range Creek ranch for 50 years.

    Academic text (2004)
  • Vsteinsson showed me one of the pit houses.

    Academic text (2007)
  • I was immensely impressed by the size and complexity of the pit-house sites, which dated to the eighth century A.D.

    Academic text (2009)
  • "The pit houses were very well insulated," says Kevin Jones, Utah's state archaeologist.

    Academic text (2004)
  • From the outside, these pit houses would have looked like large mounds of mud, but inside they had seven-foot-high ceilings.

    Academic text (2004)
  • They climbed down another ladder into the dark, one-room pit house that sank halfway under the earth.

    Fiction book (1995)
  • The size of the houses and the arrangement of the living space are very similar to pit houses found east of the Elbe River and at Slavic enclaves in Denmark.

    Academic text (2007)
  • The next largest sites of that period had about 20 pit houses (and those are hailed as prodigies), and 99 percent of the sites of Shabik'eschee's time were made up of only one or two houses.

    Academic text (2009)
  • The early Puebloans built their homes in pit houses that provided shelter from harsh weather.

Synonyms

dugout
vspit-house
4 6.0

A shelter dug into the ground and covered with earth

is mainly for traditional habitation or sheltering animals rather than wartime use
pithouse
vspit-house
  • Specialized
9.9

A shelter partly dug into the ground with a roof for people or animals

is identical in meaning but shown with a hyphenated form

How Underground

bunker
144 4.6
dugout
4 6.0
pit-house
  • Specialized
1 8.6
earthship
  • Specialized
1 7.0
house
1.0

Surface Forms

pit-house singular
pit-houses plural

Morphology

pit-house = pit + house (transparent) = pit + house

The meaning is a literal combination of 'pit' and 'house' (a house partly in a pit), which is directly inferable by learners.

Etymology

The word pit-house is simply two common words joined: pit (a 'hole in the ground') and house. So a pit-house is literally a 'house in a hole', a shelter dug into the ground to keep people or animals warm and safe.