pot boiler
pot boiler noun: a creative work of low quality (book, art, etc.), produced merely to earn a living or for profit, as opposed to serious creative expression.
Noun
pot boiler (plural pot boilers)
- 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
- No man is a success in business unless he loves his work. The picture the artist paints for love is his greatest work. The pot-boiler is always something to live down.1925, Florence Scovel Shinn, The Game of Life and how to play it
- A stone used to transfer heat from a fire into a vessel of water, so as to heat the contents.
Forms of pot boiler
| plural | pot boilers |
|---|---|
| alternative form | potboiler |
| alternative form | pot-boiler |
Origin of pot boiler
The figurative sense comes from the notion that the writer's or artist's output is enough to provide sustenance; compare breadwinner, put food on the table, and keep the lights on.
Questions about pot boiler
- What does pot boiler mean?
- Pot boiler means a creative work of low quality (book, art, etc.), produced merely to earn a living or for profit, as opposed to serious creative expression.
- What part of speech is pot boiler?
- Pot boiler is a noun.
- What is the plural of pot boiler?
- The plural of pot boiler is pot boilers.
Words near pot boiler in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: 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.