passion pit

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passion pit (plural passion pits)

1. (slang) A drive-in theatre or other unlit or dimly-lit secluded public or private location, with particular reference to it as a place of intimacy.
   • 1952, Maxwell Griffith, Port of call, Lippincott, page 23:

     The men who worked in it called it the Passion Pit in wry remembrance of other dark rooms they had known and used for more intimate and more enjoyable purposes...

   • 1956, Ian Fleming, Diamonds are forever, Cape, page 145:

     We gotta hide up some-place and let them lose us. Tell you what. There's a passion pit just where this comes out onto 95. Drive-in movie.

   • 1959, “Theatre arts, Volume 43, Issue 6”, in Theatre Arts, Inc., page 39:

     I don't have enough dough to take this chick to a passion pit.

   • 1971, Seymour Martin Lipset, Gerald M. Schaflander, Passion and politics: student activism in America, Little, Brown, page 277:

     They won't have to brag about how far they went, and the mechanical, "plumbing" aspect of sex in the back seat at the passion pit may soon be a thing of the past.

   • 1979, Stephen King, Night Shift, Signet, page 199:

     He sat on the back porch on the weekends and watched glumly as a never ending progression of young boys he had never seen before popped out to mutter a quick hello before taking his buxom daughter off to the local passion pit.

   • 1996, William Gildea, When the Colts Belonged to Baltimore: A Father and a Son, a Team and a Time, JHU Press, page 172:

     That was the summer the Bengies Drive-In movie opened. Instantly it became the most notorious passion pit we'd ever heard of.

   • 2010, Carroll Osburn, The Edge of the Wedge: Recollections of a Reluctant Prodigal, AuthorHouse, page 211:

     She wanted to see what the passion pit was all about, but I took her to supper and to South Pacific in Memphis rather than to Dragstrip Girl at our drive-in. Anyway, rumor had it that she'd already been to the passion pit.

2. (slang) Any place where sexual activity commonly occurs.
   • 1996, Sex: a man's guide, Rodale, page 163:

     As relationships mature, the bedroom gets de-coupled from its former role as a passion pit and instead becomes a place to zonk out, watch TV or work.

   • 2004, Donald Olson, Frommer's Vancouver & Victoria 2005, John Wiley and Sons, page 181:

     Downstairs, it's The Nightclub - a large room with a funky semi-circular glowing blue bar, big comfy wall banquettes, a secluded circular passion pit in one corner, and a medium-size dance floor.

   • 2009, R B Conroy, In My Father's Image: Life in the Shadows of a Local Legend, CCB Publishing, page 234:

     During their teenage years, this secluded area was affectionately referred to as the pit, short for passion pit.