Word.ws English Dictionary

fly-pitch

fly-pitch verb: to sell goods on the street without a vendor's licence, usually from a small suitcase, wooden crate, etc., ready to depart hurriedly if the authorities arrive.

Verb

fly-pitch (third-person singular simple present fly-pitches, present participle fly-pitching, simple past and past participle fly-pitched)

  1. To sell goods on the street without a vendor's licence, usually from a small suitcase, wooden crate, etc., ready to depart hurriedly if the authorities arrive.
    • “Oh, come on, Tiny”, the trader from the fruit stall said lightly trying to ease the tension, “we all started that way. I ’ad to fly pitch for months before I got me license.”1990, Anna King, Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries, →ISBN, page 10
    • He didn’t want involvement with the filth if he could avoid it, anyway; he’d done dodgy deals around town a few times, fly-pitching and ripping off a few tourists, minor stuff, but it was best to keep a low profile.2011, Jessie Keane, The Make, →ISBN, page 104

Noun

fly-pitch

  1. A temporary location on the street from which goods are sold.
    • “Bin workin’ a fly pitch in the Sat’day gaff,” said Micky Barnet.1939, J.B. Priestly, Let the People Sing, page 217
    • The road was packed with wagons and people going about their mid-morning business. Delivery carts piled high with furniture, hay and crates negotiated their way between the fly-pitch barrows selling the early catch from Billingsgate market half a mile away.2012, Jean Fullerton, Hold on to Hope, →ISBN, page 25

Forms of fly-pitch

third-person singular presentfly-pitches
present participlefly-pitching
past participlefly-pitched
pastfly-pitched

Questions about fly-pitch

What does fly-pitch mean?
Fly-pitch means to sell goods on the street without a vendor's licence, usually from a small suitcase, wooden crate, etc., ready to depart hurriedly if the authorities arrive.
What part of speech is fly-pitch?
Fly-pitch can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of fly-pitch?
The past tense of fly-pitch is fly-pitched.

Words near fly-pitch in the dictionary

  1. fly-papered
  2. fly-papering
  3. fly-papers
  4. fly-past
  5. fly-pasts
  6. fly-pitch
  7. fly-pitched
  8. fly-pitcher
  9. fly-pitchers
  10. fly-pitches
  11. fly-pitching

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fly-pitch (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “fly-pitch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fly-pitch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.