Word.ws English Dictionary

pot

UK/pɒt//pɑt/

pot noun: a flat-bottomed vessel (usually metal) used for cooking food, possibly excluding saucepans (see usage notes). Also the clipping of potbelly.

pot: a flat-bottomed vessel (usually metal) used for cooking food, possibly excluding saucepans (see...
Image: Kid Keen 47, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

pot (plural pots)

  1. A flat-bottomed vessel (usually metal) used for cooking food, possibly excluding saucepans (see usage notes).
    Synonyms:
    cookpot, cooking pot
    1. (preceded by definite article) The nominal household cooking vessel, metaphorically standing for the supply of food for a meal, or for the home.
      • 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.1999, Robert Lacey, Danny Danziger, The Year 1000: What life was like at the turn of The First Millennium, London: Abacus, published 2000, page 143
  2. A vessel (usually earthenware) used with a seal for storing food, such as a honeypot.
  3. A vessel used for brewing or serving drinks: a coffee pot or teapot.
  4. A vessel used to hold soil for growing plants, particularly flowers: a flowerpot.
    • 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...1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter X, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
  5. A vessel used for urination and defecation: a chamber pot; (figuratively, slang) a toilet; the lavatory.
    • Shit or get off the pot.
    • “Clinton,” Gail cried from outside, “are you going to sit on the pot all day?”2011, Ben Zeller, Secrets of Beaver Creek, page 204
  6. A crucible: a melting pot.
  7. (Maine) A pot-shaped trap used for catching lobsters or other seafood: a lobster pot.
  8. A pot-shaped metal or earthenware extension of a flue above the top of a chimney: a chimney pot.
  9. A perforated cask for draining sugar.
  10. (obsolete) An earthen or pewter cup or mug used for drinking liquor.
    • "So kindly keep the vainglorious enumeration of your pots for the benefit of those village idiots who compose your particular set of boozing companions."1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, →OCLC, page 85
  11. (Australia, Tasmania, Victoria) A glass of beer in Australia whose size varies regionally but is typically around 10 fl oz (285 mL).
    • 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.2009, Deborah Penrith et al., Live & Work in Australia, page 187
    Synonyms:
    middy, schooner
  12. (archaic except in place names) Pothole, sinkhole, vertical cave.
    • Rowten Pot
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  1. A shallow hole used in certain games played with marbles. The marbles placed in it are called potsies.
  2. (slang, uncountable) Ruin or deterioration.
    • After his arrest, his prospects went to pot.
  3. (historical) Any of various traditional units of volume notionally based on the capacity of a pot.
  4. (historical) An iron hat with a broad brim worn as a helmet.
    • 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...1786, Francis Grose, A Treatise on Ancient Armour and Weapons, page 12
  5. A pot-shaped non-conducting (usually ceramic) stand that supports an electrified rail while insulating it from the ground.
  6. 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.
    • No one's interested. You need to sweeten the pot.
    Synonyms:
    kitty, pool
  7. An allocation of money for a particular purpose.
    • a pension pot
    • a savings pot
  8. (UK, slang) A favorite: a heavily-backed horse.
  9. (East-Midlands, Yorkshire) A plaster cast.

Verb (1)

pot (third-person singular simple present pots, present participle potting, simple past and past participle potted)

  1. To put (something) into a pot.
    • to pot a plant
  2. To preserve by bottling or canning.
    • potted meat
  3. To package a circuit by encasing it in resin.
  4. (transitive) To cause a ball to fall into a pocket.
  5. (intransitive) To be capable of being potted.
    • The black ball doesn't pot; the red is in the way.
  6. (slang, transitive) To shoot with a firearm.
    • 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.1897, Encyclopaedia of Sport
    • 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.2005, John Wilcox, The Road To Kandahar
  7. (dated, intransitive, slang) To take a potshot, or haphazard shot, with a firearm.
  8. (colloquial, transitive) To secure; gain; win; bag.
  9. (UK) To send someone to jail, expeditiously.
  10. (UK, dialectal, obsolete) To tipple; to drink.
    • It is less labour to plough than to pot it.1623, Owen Feltham, Resolves: Divine, Moral, Political
  11. (transitive) To drain (e.g. sugar of the molasses) in a perforated cask.
    • Too much temper likewise prevents the melasses from separating from the sugar when it is potted or put into the hogshead1793, Bryan Edwards, History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies
  12. (UK, transitive) To seat a person, usually a young child, on a potty or toilet, typically during toilet teaching.
    • 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.1975, Nancie R. Finnie, Handling the Young Cerebral Palsied Child, →ISBN, page 75
    • 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.1978, Penelope Leach, Your Baby & Child from Birth to Age Five, →ISBN, page 225
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  1. (East-Midlands) To apply a plaster cast to a broken limb.
  2. To catch (a fish, eel, etc) via a pot.
    • Most Fishneck watermen oystered in winter, using the same small skiffs from which they potted crabs in summer.1986, Carolyn Ellis, Fisher Folk: Two Communities on Chesapeake Bay, University Press of Kentucky, →ISBN, page 77
    • 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.1994, The Dukes County Intelligencer, volumes 36-37, page 131
  3. (transitive) To score (a drop goal).
    • With five minutes to go, Trevathan potted his second goal, and finally it was the fullback Taylor who scored.1967, Arthur H. Carman, Ranfurly Shield Rugby, page 139
    • He played for the Oxford Australians against their Cambridge counterparts, and even potted a few goals at picnic Rugby matches.1998, Geoffrey Serle: In Tribute, page 20

Noun (2)

pot (uncountable)

  1. (slang) Marijuana.
    • 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!1968 July, Shel Silverstein, “Silverstein's Hippies”, in Playboy Magazine, page 189

Noun (3)

pot (plural pots)

  1. (slang) 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.

Verb (2)

pot (third-person singular simple present pots, present participle potting, simple past and past participle potted)

  1. (slang) To fade volume in or out by means of a potentiometer.
    • While the announcer is talking, the select switch on the mixing board for the microphone input is selected, and the microphone is “potted up.”1999, A Broadcast Engineering Tutorial for Non-engineers, page 23

Also used as

pot is also the clipping of potbelly.

pot is also the clipping of potshot.

pot is also the alternative form of pott.

pot is also the clipping of potion.

pot meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

pot in Hindi

vessel for cooking or storing food etc.
बरतन bartan, मटका maṭkā, पतीला patīlā

pot in Tamil

vessel for cooking or storing food etc.
பாத்திரம் pāttiram, பானை pāṉai
protruding belly
பானை pāṉai
unit of volume notionally equivalent to the capacity of a pot
பானை pāṉai
marijuana
கஞ்சா kañcā

pot in Urdu

vessel for cooking or storing food etc.
بَرْتَن bartan, مَٹْکا maṭkā, پَتِیلا patīlā

pot in Bengali

পাত্র
More languagesFewer languages
pot in Telugu
కుండ kuṇḍa
pot in Malayalam
കലം
pot in Kannada
ಮಡಕೆ
pot in Punjabi
ਘਡ਼ਾ
pot in Gujarati
પોટ, વાસણ
pot in Odia
ପାତ୍ର, ପାତ୍ରଟି
pot in Sanskrit
चरु caru, पात्र pātra
pot in Nepali
भाँडो
pot in Arabic
قِدْر qidr, إِنَاء ʔināʔ, طَنْجَرَة ṭanjara, حَلَّة ḥalla
pot in Malay
periuk
pot in Persian
دیگ dig, قَابْلَمِه ġâblame
pot in Thai
หม้อ mɔ̂ɔ
pot in Vietnamese
nồi
pot in Myanmar
အိုး ui:

Examples of pot in a sentence

  • Near bedtime, about 10 p.m. or so, I sit on the pot.2011 December 27, Ken Jacuzzi with Diane Holloway, “This Is Your Life, Ken Jacuzzi!”, in Jacuzzi: A Father’s Invention to Ease a Son’s...
  • The pot, at the other end of the alimentary canal, remains a transgressive topic.2023 June 26, Dwight Garner, “Let’s Talk About the Bathroom Scene”, in The New York Times Book Review, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times...
  • 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.2004, Joan Gomez, Coping with Incontinence, →ISBN, page 33:

All 40 example sentences with pot

Synonyms of pot

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of pot

Forms of pot

Noun
pluralpots
Verb
third-person singular presentpots
present participlepotting
past participlepotted
pastpotted

Past tense of pot: potted

Plural of pot: pots

Origin of 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.

Possibly a shortened form of Mexican Spanish potiguaya or potaguaya (“cannabis leaves”), or potación de guaya (literally “drink of grief”), supposedly denoting a drink of wine or brandy in which marijuana buds were steeped, from pota + de + guaya (see guayar (“to lament”)).

Clipping of potentiometer.

Words formed from pot

Phrases with pot

152 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with pot

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about pot

What does pot mean?
Pot means a flat-bottomed vessel (usually metal) used for cooking food, possibly excluding saucepans (see usage notes).
What is pot in Hindi?
Pot in Hindi is बरतन (bartan), मटका (maṭkā), पतीला (patīlā). See Pot meaning in Hindi.
How do you use pot in a sentence?
Near bedtime, about 10 p.m. or so, I sit on the pot.
What part of speech is pot?
Pot can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce pot?
Pot is pronounced /pɒt/ (UK).
What is the plural of pot?
The plural of pot is pots.

Words near pot in the dictionary

  1. posy-sniffers
  2. Posyet Bay
  3. posynomial
  4. posynomials
  5. posé
  6. pot
  7. pot ale
  8. pot au feu
  9. pot bellies
  10. pot belly
  11. pot boiler

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pot (page history and authors); pot (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); pot (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); pot (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); pot (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); pot (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); pot (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); pot (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-pot.ogg, en-au-pot.ogg.

Cite this entry: “pot.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pot. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.