tin-pot
UK/ˈtɪnpɒt//ˈtɪnˌpɑt/
tin-pot adjective: of inferior quality; shoddy.
Adjective
tin-pot (not comparable)
- Of inferior quality; shoddy.
- It was a great comfort to turn from that chap to my influential friend, the battered, twisted, ruined, tin-pot steamboat.1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I
- Synonyms:
- ass, bad, base, below par, bottom-shelf, BTEC, bum, cheap, cheap and nasty, cheapshit
- Insignificant or minor, especially in an amusing and petty manner.
- Jim Hacker: Why are we having an official visit from this tin-pot little African country? / Sir Humphrey Appleby: Minister, I beg of you not to refer to it as a tin-pot little African country. It's an LDC.1980 March 3, Antony Jay, Jonathan Lynn, “The Official Visit”, in Yes, Minister, season 1, episode 2, spoken by Jim Hacker and Humphrey Appleby (Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne)
- Synonyms:
- base, contemptible, floccinaucinihilipilificatious, foolish, for the birds, futile, frivolous, idle, ignorable, immaterial
Noun
tin-pot (plural tin-pots)
Synonyms of tin-pot
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of tin-pot
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| alternative form | tinpot |
| alternative form | tin pot |
| Noun | |
| plural | tin-pots |
Origin of tin-pot
From tin + pot, referring to the cheapness and poor quality of pots made from tin or tin plate.
Words formed from tin-pot
Phrases with tin-pot
Questions about tin-pot
- What does tin-pot mean?
- Tin-pot means of inferior quality; shoddy.
- What part of speech is tin-pot?
- Tin-pot can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce tin-pot?
- Tin-pot is pronounced /ˈtɪnpɒt/ (UK).
Words near tin-pot in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tin-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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-tin-pot.ogg, En-au-tin-pot.ogg.
Cite this entry: “tin-pot.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tin-pot. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.