Word.ws English Dictionary

pot-kettle-black

pot-kettle-black is the alternative form of pot.

Meaning of pot

Noun

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.

See all 40 meanings of pot

Questions about pot-kettle-black

What is pot-kettle-black the alternative form of?
Pot-kettle-black is the alternative form of pot.

Words near pot-kettle-black in the dictionary

  1. pot-hook
  2. pot-hooks
  3. pot-house
  4. pot-houses
  5. pot-in-pot
  6. pot-kettle-black
  7. pot-licker
  8. pot-luck
  9. pot-pie
  10. pot-pies
  11. pot-plant

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pot-kettle-black (page history and authors); pot (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-kettle-black.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pot-kettle-black. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.