Word.ws English Dictionary

tar pit

tar pit is the alternative form of tarpit.

Meaning of tarpit

Noun

tarpit (plural tarpits)

  1. A lake of asphalt formed when subterranean bitumen leaks to the ground surface. Such pits are important in forming fossil fuel reserves; they are also apt to trap passing animals, which become fossilized in the tar.
  2. A service that purposely delays incoming connections in order to reduce the effectiveness of spamming and similar techniques.

See all 3 meanings of tarpit

Forms of tar pit

pluraltar pits

Questions about tar pit

What is tar pit the alternative form of?
Tar pit is the alternative form of tarpit.

Words near tar pit in the dictionary

  1. Tar Heel Stater
  2. Tar Heels
  3. tar out
  4. tar paper
  5. tar papers
  6. tar pit
  7. tar pits
  8. tar sand
  9. tar sands
  10. tar spot
  11. TAR syndrome

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tar pit (page history and authors); tarpit (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: “tar pit.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tar_pit. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.