tarpit

tarpit noun: 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.

Noun

tarpit (plural tarpits)

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.
A service that purposely delays incoming connections in order to reduce the effectiveness of spamming and similar techniques.

Verb

tarpit (third-person singular simple present tarpits, present participle tarpitting, simple past and past participle tarpitted)

(transitive) To delay by means of a tarpit service.
- If an attack matches a certain pattern, the connection can be tarpitted.2004, Steven Andres, Brian Kenyon, Erik Pack Birkholz, Security Sage's Guide to Hardening the Network Infrastructure, page 415

Forms of tarpit

Noun
plural	tarpits
alternative form	tar pit
Verb
third-person singular present	tarpits
present participle	tarpitting
past participle	tarpitted
past	tarpitted

Origin of tarpit

From tar + pit.

Words formed from tarpit

Turing tarpit

Questions about tarpit

What does tarpit mean?: Tarpit means 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.
What part of speech is tarpit?: Tarpit can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of tarpit?: The plural of tarpit is tarpits.

Words near tarpit in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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