Word.ws English Dictionary

pot-boiler

pot-boiler is the alternative spelling of pot boiler.

Meaning of pot boiler

Noun

pot boiler (plural pot boilers)

  1. (derogatory, figuratively, mildly) A creative work of low quality (book, art, etc.), produced merely to earn a living or for profit, as opposed to serious creative expression.
    • Arists and novelists of a certain stamp joke about ‘pot-boilers’, the name facetiously given to hasty, worthless pictures and books[…][1864 August 27, Saturday Review
  2. A stone used to transfer heat from a fire into a vessel of water, so as to heat the contents.

Forms of pot-boiler

pluralpot-boilers

Questions about pot-boiler

What is pot-boiler the alternative spelling of?
Pot-boiler is the alternative spelling of pot boiler.

Words near pot-boiler in the dictionary

  1. pot-bellied pigs
  2. pot-bellied seahorse
  3. pot-belliedness
  4. pot-bellies
  5. pot-belly
  6. pot-boiler
  7. pot-boilers
  8. pot-bound
  9. pot-boy
  10. pot-boys
  11. pot-companion

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pot-boiler (page history and authors); pot boiler (page history and authors). 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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Cite this entry: “pot-boiler.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pot-boiler. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.