pot
Meanings
- A flat-bottomed vessel (usually metal) used for cooking food, possibly excluding saucepans (see usage notes).
- The nominal household cooking vessel, metaphorically standing for the supply of food for a meal, or for the home.
- Various similar open-topped vessels, particularly
- A vessel (usually earthenware) used with a seal for storing food, such as a honeypot.
- A vessel used for brewing or serving drinks: a coffeepot or teapot.
- A vessel used to hold soil for growing plants, particularly flowers: a flowerpot.
- A vessel used for urination and defecation: a chamber pot; (figuratively, slang) a toilet; the lavatory.
- A crucible: a melting pot.
- A pot-shaped trap used for catching lobsters or other seafood: a lobster pot.
- A pot-shaped metal or earthenware extension of a flue above the top of a chimney: a chimney pot.
- A perforated cask for draining sugar.
- An earthen or pewter cup or mug used for drinking liquor.
- To put (something) into a pot.
- To preserve by bottling or canning.
- To package a circuit by encasing it in resin.
- To cause a ball to fall into a pocket.
- To be capable of being potted.
- To shoot with a firearm.
- To take a pot shot, or haphazard shot, with a firearm.
- To secure; gain; win; bag.
- To send someone to jail, expeditiously.
- To tipple; to drink.
- To drain (e.g. sugar of the molasses) in a perforated cask.
- To seat a person, usually a young child, on a potty or toilet, typically during toilet teaching.
- Marijuana.
- A simple electromechanical device used to control resistance or voltage (often to adjust sound volume) in an electronic device by rotating or sliding when manipulated by a human thumb, screwdriver, etc.
- To fade volume in or out by means of a potentiometer.
- Clipping of potion.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *puttaz Old English pott Proto-Germanic *puttaz Frankish *pottder. Vulgar Latin pottum Old French potbor. Middle English pot English pot From Middle English pot, potte, from Old English pott (“pot”) and Old French pot (“pot”) (probably from Frankish *pott); both Old English and Frankish from Proto-Germanic *puttaz (“pot”), from Proto-Indo-European *budnós (“a type of vessel”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Pot (“pot”), Dutch pot (“pot”), German Low German Pott (“pot”), German Pott (“pot”), Swedish potta (“chamber pot”), Icelandic pottur (“tub, pot”), Old Armenian պոյտն (poytn, “pot, earthen pot”). Also, Old Norse pottr (“pot, tub, basin”). The sense of ruin or deterioration was originally a general allusion to "being chopped up and tossed in a (normally fiery) pot, like a piece of meat" (i.e. to get wasted or done with (by someone)). The 'clean' slang term which was used in reference to toilet rooms and lavatories apparently derives from English chamberpots, although now usually encountered as potty in the context of children's toilet training.