A brief rest stop for refreshment or bathroom use. From the first half of the 1800s, “pit” meant, among other things, a place where engines were repaired or maintained. Later the term “pit stop” was adopted in automobile racing, where it denoted a trackside place for refueling or some other service. Still later, the term was extended to mean such a stop, especially during an automobile trip. It also began to be used figuratively. Thus Mike Lawson had it in House Secrets (2009), “Then off to the Senate he flew, and the Senate, all the commentators concurred, was but a pit stop on his race to the Oval Office.”