# English usage **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 27, 2015, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-usage/726337 "2015-07-27T18:42:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![contradancer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@contradancer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/contradancer)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2015, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-usage/726337/1 "2015-07-27T18:42:52Z")
Okay, I know language is always changing but some things annoy me. Two in particular. 1. The pit of my stomach. I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach. It’s not I have a pit in my stomach or various other things that intimate I have this thing in my stomach rather than a place. 2. The floor is beneath your feet INSIDE; the ground is beneath your feet outside. You cannot drop something on the floor standing on your lawn. You can’t drop something on the ground standing in your living room. It sound stupid frankly. Does anyone besides me even care? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2015, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-usage/726337/2 "2015-07-27T19:18:33Z")
Sigh. Why do people who complain about word usage always avoid actually looking it up in a dictionary? 1. You’re complaining about a phrase that’s been used since the 17th century. > [@OED](#): > > pit of the stomach n. the epigastric fossa, a slight depression below the xiphisternum; (also) the epigastrium or upper abdomen, in which the stomach and solar plexus are located, esp. regarded as the seat of sensations associated with fear, unease, etc. > > 1651 J. French Art Distillation v. 142 Anoint the pit of the stomacke. > 1778 D. Garrick Let. 14 Sept. (1960) 131, I was seiz’d with a small pain at first in the Pit of my Stomach. > 1781 C. Johnstone Hist. John Juniper II. 161 Taking him a blow full in the pit of his stomach. > 1818 Scott Familiar Lett. 14 Jan. Mine old enemy the cramp grippet me by the pit of the stomach. 1. The “ground” has been used to mean floor since the 19th century. > [@OED](#): > > b. The floor. > > 1847 Webster’s Amer. Dict. Eng. Lang. Ground, a floor or pavement. > 1900 Eng. Dial. Dict. Put the baby an the ground and let 'er craal. > 1921 E. O’Neill Emperor Jones (1925) i. 7 (stage direct.) Woman (seeing the uselessness of struggling, gives way to frantic terror, and sinks to the ground). So these “new” usages have existed since before you were born. ---
**Author:** ![contradancer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@contradancer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/contradancer)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2015, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-usage/726337/3 "2015-07-27T19:34:10Z")
Anyway, I never said using an expression referring to the pit of the stomach was wrong. I said that referring to the pit of the stomach did not mean like an actual pit, like a prune or peach pit. I said it was a place rather than a thing. Go back and read where I said place, not thing. I cringe when people say I have a pit in my stomach rather than I have a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. Also, we no longer live in houses (normally) with dirt floors in this country. But my great-grandparents did, in the south. And if we did we would say ground to refer to the inside. Or I would. But, now that most of us have wooden floors, I would say that ground is no longer appropriate and it should be called a floor. Ask an architect what he calls it. And ask a landscape architect what he calls the lawn beneath his feet. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2015, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-usage/726337/4 "2015-07-27T23:52:07Z")
Here’s another dictionary clue: a pit is also a place such as digging a pit or falling into a pit. It means a deep place. So the phrase “the pit of my stomach” means the deep place in my stomach. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2015, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-usage/726337/5 "2015-07-28T06:47:00Z")
> [@contradancer](#): > > Okay, I know language is always changing but some things annoy me. > [@contradancer](#): > > … I would say that ground is no longer appropriate and it should be called a floor… Quoted for irony. ---
**Author:** ![bengangmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@bengangmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bengangmo)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2015, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-usage/726337/6 "2015-07-28T07:35:18Z")
Doesn’t either meaning work equally well for the feeling described? 1. I have a feeling of empty hollowness in the middle of my stomach 2. There is a hard, cold inedible feeling in the middle of my stomach (remember the “pit” of a fruit is the hard inedible part in the middle of fleshy wonderfullness) Not really seeing the problem? ---
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2015, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-usage/726337/7 "2015-07-28T07:58:50Z")
#2 is the type of thing children say, and are promptly corrected by solicitous parents, fearing engrained ignorance. A football pitch may be referred to as ‘the floor’ in the context of the game. e.g. _'This long ball game we’re playing is hopeless, we need to start playing it on the floor_’. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2015, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-usage/726337/8 "2015-07-28T08:47:54Z")
> [@contradancer](#): > > 1. The floor is beneath your feet INSIDE; the ground is beneath your feet outside. You cannot drop something on the floor standing on your lawn. You can’t drop something on the ground standing in your living room. It sound stupid frankly. > > Does anyone besides me even care? Floors are floor and ground is ground. They’re two different things. It’s like you’re complaining that you can’t call a dog a cat. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2015, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-usage/726337/9 "2015-07-28T11:20:55Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Floors are floor and ground is ground. They’re two different things. It’s like you’re complaining that you can’t call a dog a cat. I think his examples were of usages he disagrees with, which means you two actually agree. I’ve seen houses that had actual dirt floors and others with soil (with plants growing out of it): would that count as the ground, or not? What if it’s “carpeted” by the method of dropping the carpet atop the dirt, but plants still valiantly manage to sprout? And no, I don’t mean greenhouses, I mean buildings people lived in. What about porches, do they not have floors now? ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctor_jackson/32/32_2.png) [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2015, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-usage/726337/10 "2015-07-28T19:20:05Z")
And what of the logical conundrum created by the building level closest to the earth - the ground floor. Argh, it’s both!!! ---
**Author:** ![Cartoonacy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/848f3c/32.png) [@Cartoonacy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartoonacy)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2015, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-usage/726337/11 "2015-07-29T21:24:59Z")
> [@contradancer](#): > > I cringe when people say “I have a pit in my stomach” rather than “I have a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.” [Quotation marks added for clarity.] I think I’d cringe, too, if I’d ever heard anyone say that. But I never have. ---
**Author:** ![california\_jobcase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2015, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/english-usage/726337/12 "2015-07-29T21:40:08Z")
Move to south Georgia. People drop things in the floor down here. Mothers tell their offspring “Go clean up your room! Every sock you own is in the floor!”