Word.ws English Dictionary

whirling pits

whirling pits noun: an unpleasant sensation of spinning after consuming alcohol or other drugs.

Noun

the whirling pits pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only, slang) An unpleasant sensation of spinning after consuming alcohol or other drugs.
    • I note with interest Paul Dawson's query as to whether or not one's direction of rotation during the alcohol induced phenomenon known as "the whirling pits" depends upon the hemisphere in which one is situated (Letters, 1 September, p 643).1983, New Scientist, volume 100, number 1380, page 218
    • I ended up with the whirling pits, being sick in the bathroom for hours. It should have put me off booze forever […]2000, Alison Pressley, Changing Times: Being Young in Britain in the '60s, page 71

Questions about whirling pits

What does whirling pits mean?
Whirling pits means an unpleasant sensation of spinning after consuming alcohol or other drugs.
What part of speech is whirling pits?
Whirling pits is a noun.

Words near whirling pits in the dictionary

  1. whirlin
  2. whirling
  3. Whirling Dervish
  4. Whirling Dervishes
  5. whirling disease
  6. whirling pits
  7. whirling table
  8. whirling tables
  9. whirlingly
  10. whirlingness
  11. whirlings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whirling pits (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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