Pronunciations (2)
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/pɒt/
Pronunciation notes
- UK
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/pɑt/
Pronunciation notes
- US
Noun
A flat-bottomed vessel (usually metal) used for cooking food, possibly excluding saucepans (see usage notes).
- Synonyms
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.
- Examples
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Hunting in the year 1000 was still a democratic pastime. Every free-born Anglo-Saxon had the right to enter the forest and bring home game for the pot.
Various similar open-topped vessels, particularly A vessel (usually earthenware) used with a seal for storing food, such as a honeypot.
Various similar open-topped vessels, particularly A vessel used for brewing or serving drinks: a coffee pot or teapot.
Various similar open-topped vessels, particularly A vessel used to hold soil for growing plants, particularly flowers: a flowerpot.
- Examples
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More examples (1)
He looked round the poor room, at the distempered walls, and the bad engravings in meretricious frames, the crinkly paper and wax flowers on the chiffonier; and he thought of a room like Father Bryan's, with panelling, with cut glass, with tulips in silver pots, such a room as he had hoped to have for his own.
Various similar open-topped vessels, particularly A vessel used for urination and defecation: a chamber pot; (figuratively, slang) a toilet; the lavatory.
- Synonyms
- Examples
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Shit or get off the pot.
“Clinton,” Gail cried from outside, “are you going to sit on the pot all day?”
More examples (2)
Near bedtime, about 10 p.m. or so, I sit on the pot. My “routine” is at night so as to shorten the morning get readies and start work on time. Sometimes the p.m. pot routine is successful, sometimes not. I can only blame myself, of course, when the big event doesn’t occur. I need to drink more water during the day.
Alfred Hitchcock once told François Truffaut he wanted to make a film that would examine a city entirely through food and, unusually, waste. […] Samuel Beckett expressed this artistic vision on a more intimate scale. “Dish and pot, dish and pot, these are the poles,” his narrator says in “Malone Dies.” The dish, we discuss freely: Food, in literature and elsewhere, is part of what we talk about when we talk about culture. The pot, at the other end of the alimentary canal, remains a transgressive topic.
Various similar open-topped vessels, particularly A crucible: a melting pot.
Various similar open-topped vessels, particularly A pot-shaped trap used for catching lobsters or other seafood: a lobster pot.
Usage- Maine
- Synonyms
Various similar open-topped vessels, particularly A pot-shaped metal or earthenware extension of a flue above the top of a chimney: a chimney pot.
Various similar open-topped vessels, particularly A perforated cask for draining sugar.
Various similar open-topped vessels, particularly An earthen or pewter cup or mug used for drinking liquor.
Usage- Obsolete
- Examples
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"So kindly keep the vainglorious enumeration of your pots for the benefit of those village idiots who compose your particular set of boozing companions."
Various similar open-topped vessels, particularly A glass of beer in Australia whose size varies regionally but is typically around 10 fl oz (285 mL).
Usage- Australia
- Tasmania
- Examples
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More examples (1)
There are plenty of pubs and bars all over Australia (serving beer in schooners – 425ml or middies/pots ~285ml), and if you don′t fancy those you can drink in wine bars, pleasant beer gardens, or with friends at home.
Pothole, sinkhole, vertical cave.
- Examples
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Rowten Pot
A shallow hole used in certain games played with marbles. The marbles placed in it are called potsies.
Ruin or deterioration.
Usage- Slang
- Uncountable
- Examples
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After his arrest, his prospects went to pot.
Any of various traditional units of volume notionally based on the capacity of a pot.
Usage- Historical
An iron hat with a broad brim worn as a helmet.
Usage- Historical
- Examples
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The pot is an iron hat with broad brims: there are many under the denomination in the Tower, said to have been taken from the French...
A pot-shaped non-conducting (usually ceramic) stand that supports an electrified rail while insulating it from the ground.
The money available to be won in a hand of poker or a round of other games of chance; (figuratively) any sum of money being used as an enticement.
- Examples
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No one's interested. You need to sweeten the pot.
An allocation of money for a particular purpose.
- Examples
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a pension pot
a savings pot
A favorite: a heavily-backed horse.
Usage- UK usage
- Slang
A plaster cast.
Usage- East-Midlands
- Yorkshire
Verb
To put (something) into a pot.
- Examples
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to pot a plant
To preserve by bottling or canning.
- Examples
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potted meat
To package a circuit by encasing it in resin.
To cause a ball to fall into a pocket.
Usage- Transitive
To be capable of being potted.
Usage- Intransitive
- Examples
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The black ball doesn't pot; the red is in the way.
To shoot with a firearm.
Usage- Slang
- Transitive
- Examples
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When hunted, it [the jaguar] takes refuge in trees, and this habit is well known to hunters, who pursue it with dogs and pot it when treed.
More examples (1)
Luckily Jenkins — our best shot — was on guard and spotted him and... er... potted him, as I said. Buried him in a shallow grave below stones, so it's unlikely he will be found.
To take a potshot, or haphazard shot, with a firearm.
Usage- Dated
- Intransitive
- Slang
To secure; gain; win; bag.
Usage- Colloquial
- Transitive
To send someone to jail, expeditiously.
Usage- UK usage
To tipple; to drink.
Usage- UK usage
- dialectal
- Obsolete
- Examples
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It is less labour to plough than to pot it.
To drain (e.g. sugar of the molasses) in a perforated cask.
Usage- Transitive
- Examples
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Too much temper likewise prevents the melasses from separating from the sugar when it is potted or put into the hogshead
To seat a person, usually a young child, on a potty or toilet, typically during toilet teaching.
Usage- UK usage
- Transitive
- Examples
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More examples (4)
Ideally the best Ideally the best way of tackling the problem of toilet training, is to 'pot' your child at set intervals when he is at home, even though he may no longer be a baby, thus establishing a regular routine instead of one at odd intervals.
If you leave out this “catching" stage altogether and start proper toilet training at, say, eighteen months you will only have to pot your baby about 2000 times for the same effect.
Do not make the mistake of potting your baby as early as possible, but wait until she gives the signal that she is aware that puddles are somehow to do with her.
Of course, if at any stage your child takes a violent dislike to the pot, then I would put it away for a few weeks and then try again, but if the pot is very comfortable, your attitude is calm and you don't over-pot your child (put him on the pot too often or talk about the pot too much), this shouldn't happen.
To apply a plaster cast to a broken limb.
Usage- East-Midlands
To catch (a fish, eel, etc) via a pot.
- Examples
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Most Fishneck watermen oystered in winter, using the same small skiffs from which they potted crabs in summer.
More examples (1)
Potting Eels: Except for the mature neshaws, Vineyard eels were potted (caught by pots) in September and October. […] When eeling was good, each pot would catch 25 to 100 pounds of neshaws; some pots would be filled to capacity.
To score (a drop goal).
Usage- Transitive
- Examples
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With five minutes to go, Trevathan potted his second goal, and finally it was the fullback Taylor who scored.
He played for the Oxford Australians against their Cambridge counterparts, and even potted a few goals at picnic Rugby matches.
Noun
Marijuana.
Usage- Slang
- Uncountable
- Examples
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The way we figure it, ma'am, if everybody walked around naked, smoked pot and listened to rock'n'roll, there wouldn't be any more wars!
Noun
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.
Usage- Slang
Verb
To fade volume in or out by means of a potentiometer.
Usage- Slang
- Examples
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While the announcer is talking, the select switch on the mixing board for the microphone input is selected, and the microphone is “potted up.”
Noun
metal or earthenware cooking vessel that is usually round and deep; often has a handle and lid
- Broader terms
a plumbing fixture for defecation and urination
- Broader terms
the quantity contained in a pot
- Synonyms
- Broader terms
a container in which plants are cultivated
- Synonyms
- Broader terms
(often followed by ‘of’) a large number or amount or extent
- Synonyms
- Broader terms
- Examples
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a batch of letters
a deal of trouble
More examples (6)
a lot of money
he made a mint on the stock market
see the rest of the winners in our huge passel of photos
it must have cost plenty
a slew of journalists
a wad of money
the cumulative amount involved in a game (such as poker)
slang for a paunch
a resistor with three terminals, the third being an adjustable center terminal; used to adjust voltages in radios and TV sets
- Synonyms
- Broader terms
street names for marijuana
Verb
plant in a pot
- Examples
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He potted the palm