I’m hearing people on TV saying “I have a pit in my stomach” referring to being scared or afraid, etc. All my life I’ve heard and said if scared or afraid “I felt fear in the pit of my stomach.” Having a pit in your stomach sounds stupid. But after hearing it a number of times I’m wondering if I’m witnessing the evolution of a saying or maybe people with a lack of reading comprehension, or being stupid or uneducated, or lazy when using the Internet to communicate. I’m older and don’t get out much anymore and pretty much sit and watch the world go by on TV, the computer and the radio so what do I know? Anyway, this grates on my nerves, especially when it’s someone well known.
This would grate on me, too. But I haven’t heard it. Can you recall where it showed up?
Maybe the butterflies left it there?
I wonder if this is a case of people who know the saying intentionally bastardizing it for humor, and having it catch on enough that people who don’t know the original saying start using it seriously, akin to “throwing a monkey in the wrench.”
Ew, who wants insects in their tummy? The correct expression is “butter flying in my stomach.” 
In response to the OP’s subject, we are witnessing the evolution of language because people are stupid. It’s becoming acceptable to use quotation marks for emphasis, and I regularly see professionally produced articles that contain egg corns. “Honing in” (instead of “homing in”) is a great example.
People who attempt use these expressions should study them a bit first.
We just had a thread on this but I can’t find it now. I’ll get on board with your complaint if you agree with me that people who say, “The proof is in the pudding,” are not right in the head.
But in all honesty, it communicates the same meaning as the longer phrase and people are lazy. I suggest not worrying about it, unless you enjoy ulcers.
Have heard the expression, never understood what it meant (and was therefore smart enough to not use it without further investigation).
What if Hercule Poirot utters this sentence during his sleuthing, after he concludes that Lady Murder-Victim must have been poisoned by her dessert? (Everyone else had the blancmange, you see.)
What irks me are the astonishing number of places I see women for the singular and/or woman for the plural.
Language (and specifically dialects, as I’ve never heard this saying, maybe it’s a regional thing) changes based on usage. That’s just the way it is. You can call it stupid if that makes you feel more intellectually superior, I suppose. But language evolution isn’t a democratic process. You can kick and stomp and say, “That’s improper! Wahh!” all you want, but it won’t stop real people from talking however the heck they want to.
I think all this is due to the demise of copy editing. Corporate bean-counters seem to think spell-check is a cost-effective substitute for actual people who know the language. A fringe benefit is an entertaining increase in teh stupid.
Bri2k
It’s really nice that you’re bringing up this egalitarian and cultural relativity-based argument, but I still think that it’s dumb when so widely applied. If one chooses to purposely obfuscate language by using vocabulary in an unintended manner, one may find that they are continually misunderstood by those with whom they speak. In simpler language, if you’re using the wrong words and phrases to express yourself, people may think you mean something else, or even that you’re stupid because you don’t know how to use your words properly.
Is this just on one show, or is this on others? I haven’t heard this saying at all, on TV or off.
“Is this language evolving or is this just being stupid?”
It can easily be both.
No. They can’t do that. That’s just…wrong!
Stupid, just like those who say or write “Wah-la!” No, no, no, no, no, it’s voilà. Please, make them stop, I don’t want to hurt them.
I would love for a couple examples of people being bamboozled by the phrase, “pit in my stomach”.
Honestly, I’d never considered the origin of the phrase. Many idioms don’t make sense (hence them being idioms), and some only do if you frequently make a habit of studying 20th Century French Literature (or whatever). Hell, there’s the infamous “Whole 9 yards” where we STILL haven’t traced the original intent. To complain about using a new mutation of an idiom as being stupid because “it doesn’t make any sense when logically inspected” shows a misunderstanding of idioms in general, imo. Now, the new idiom may have arisen from some sort of memetic mutation, misspoken phrase, or sheer idiocy, but to imply that everyone who uses it that way is in some way obtuse ignores the fact that many of us take stock phrases at face value, despite whether or not they make sense, because if we only used idioms that made sense we’d have very few idioms (or very many experts on 20th Century French Literature).
I don’t know why it irritates me to hear that someone “has a pit in their stomach.” Is it a prune pit, or a cherry pit; maybe a peach pit? In the pit means in the bottom recesses of my stomach I physically feel the shock, consternation, fear, whatever. I don’t care if it changes but saying that you have a pit in your stomach sounds stupid and illogical. So kill me.
I think it’s people being stupid, or at the least, ignorant. They may not know the exact, correct phrase. Like when my sister was a kid, she didn’t say, “Patience is a virtue.” She said, “Patiences avert you.” It makes sense…