Word.ws English Dictionary

potboiler

potboiler 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 potboiler

pluralpotboilers

Questions about potboiler

What is potboiler the alternative spelling of?
Potboiler is the alternative spelling of pot boiler.

Words near potboiler in the dictionary

  1. potbelly pig
  2. potbelly stove
  3. potbelly stoves
  4. potboil
  5. potboiled
  6. potboiler
  7. potboilers
  8. potboiling
  9. potboils
  10. potbound
  11. potboy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: potboiler (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: “potboiler.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/potboiler. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.