Wiktionary
alt. 1 A pit filled with snakes. 2 Any institution (such as a school, prison, hospital, etc.) run in an inept or inhumane way, or full of hostile or treacherous people. n. 1 A pit filled with snakes. 2 Any institution (such as a school, prison, hospital, etc.) run in an inept or inhumane way, or full of hostile or treacherous people.
WordNet
n. any place of pain and turmoil; "the hell of battle"; "the inferno of the engine room"; "when you're alone Christmas is the pits"; [syn: hell, hell on earth, hellhole, the pits, inferno]
pejorative terms for an insane asylum [syn: Bedlam, booby hatch, crazy house, cuckoo's nest, funny farm, funny house, loony bin, madhouse, nut house, nuthouse, sanatorium]
Wikipedia
Snake pits are places of horror, torture and even death in European legends and fairy tales. The Viking warlord Ragnar Lodbrok is said to have been thrown into a snake pit and died there, after his army had been defeated in battle by King Aelle II of Northumbria. An older legend recorded in Atlakviða and Oddrúnargrátr tells that Attila the Hun murdered Gunnarr, the King of Burgundy, in a snake pit. In a medieval German poem, Dietrich von Bern is thrown into a snake pit by the giant Sigenot - he is protected by a magical jewel that had been given to him earlier by a dwarf.
In common metaphorical usage, a snake pit can mean any institution (such as a school, prison, hospital, or nursing home) or organization led in an inept or inhumane way, or an institution containing many people who may be hostile, untrustworthy, or otherwise treacherous ("snakes"). For example, the film The Snake Pit (1948) tells the story of a woman who finds herself in an insane asylum and cannot remember how she got there.
Terror was used on those deemed insane to try to make them sane again. Lowering the insane into a pit of snakes was a method of treatment.
A Snake pit is a place of horror, torture and even death in European legends and fairy tales.
Usage examples of "snake pit".
Rincewind looked up at the fifteen-foot-deep walls of the snake pit, and rubbed his bruises.
Perhaps he had foreseen this moment - in the same inexplicable way that he had often been able to predict the direction of the course marker lights when flying in the Snake Pit.
An officer was ahead, standing with a drawn claymore beside the snake pit and staring down into its horror, and then he turned and walked towards Hakeswill.