Pitted means marked with small hollows. Pitted stone, a pitted surface, pitted with rust.
In metal it names a specific kind of corrosion that goes deep at single points rather than spreading evenly, and that is far more dangerous than general rust because a pitted pipe can be nearly full thickness and still fail. Pitted also means with the stone removed, as of olives.
1adjectivepittedMarked with small hollows.
“The surface of the moon is pitted with craters.”
2adjectivestoneWith the stone taken out.
“Add a handful of pitted black olives to the pasta sauce.”
pitted is a quality of surface.
Old English
pytt
Middle English
pit
English
pit
English, today
pitted
pit comes from Middle English pit, from Old English pytt. From Middle English pit, pet, put, from Old English pytt, from Proto-West Germanic puti, from Latin puteus (“trench, pit, well”), although there are phonetic difficulties.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA