Word.ws English Dictionary

pothouse ballad

pothouse ballad noun: a popular and often political song emerging from and performed in working-class taverns, pubs, and "pothouses" during the 18th and 19th centuries in the British Isles, which served common people by offering social commentary, political satire, and news all in a highly lyrical rhyme with a simple rhyme scheme.

Noun

pothouse ballad (plural pothouse ballads)

  1. A popular and often political song emerging from and performed in working-class taverns, pubs, and "pothouses" during the 18th and 19th centuries in the British Isles, which served common people by offering social commentary, political satire, and news all in a highly lyrical rhyme with a simple rhyme scheme.
    • We were none of us yet the trumpery heroes that we were shortly to become. Time had not flung its shimmering mantle upon us; or, to speak more precisely, "Clonbrony Wood" and the other pothouse ballads had not yet been written.1988, Thomas Flanagan, novel: The Tenants of Time chapter 11

Forms of pothouse ballad

pluralpothouse ballads

Origin of pothouse ballad

From pothouse + ballad.

Questions about pothouse ballad

What does pothouse ballad mean?
Pothouse ballad means a popular and often political song emerging from and performed in working-class taverns, pubs, and "pothouses" during the 18th and 19th centuries in the British Isles, which served common people by offering social commentary, political satire, and news all in a highly lyrical rhyme with a simple rhyme scheme.
What part of speech is pothouse ballad?
Pothouse ballad is a noun.
What is the plural of pothouse ballad?
The plural of pothouse ballad is pothouse ballads.

Words near pothouse ballad in the dictionary

  1. pothook
  2. pothooks
  3. pothos
  4. pothoses
  5. pothouse
  6. pothouse ballad
  7. pothouses
  8. Poths
  9. pothunt
  10. pothunted
  11. pothunter

Source and license

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