pot

Meanings

Noun

• A flat-bottomed vessel (usually metal) used for cooking food.
• Various similar open-topped vessels, particularly
• Ruin or deterioration.
• An iron hat with a broad brim worn as a helmet.
• A pot-shaped non-conducting (usually ceramic) stand that supports an electrified rail while insulating it from the ground.
• The money available to be won in a hand of poker or a round of other games of chance; any sum of money being used as an enticement.
• A favorite: a heavily-backed horse.
• Short form of potbelly: a pot-shaped belly, a paunch.
• Short form of potshot: a haphazard shot; an easy or cheap shot.
• A plaster cast.
• Alternative of pott: a former size of paper, 12.5 × 15 inches.
• Marijuana.
• A simple electromechanical device used to control resistance or voltage (often to adjust sound volume) in an electronic device by rotating or sliding when manipulated by a human thumb, screwdriver, etc.
• Short form of potion

Verb

• To put (something) into a pot.
• To preserve by bottling or canning.
• To cause a ball to fall into a pocket.
• To be capable of being potted.
• To shoot with a firearm.
• To take a pot shot, or haphazard shot, with a firearm.
• To secure; gain; win; bag.
• To send someone to gaol, expeditiously.
• To tipple; to drink.
• To drain (e.g. sugar of the molasses) in a perforated cask.
• To seat a person, usually a young child, on a potty or toilet, typically during toilet teaching.
• To apply a plaster cast to a broken limb.
• To catch (a fish, eel, etc) via a pot.
• To score (a drop goal).
• To fade volume in or out by means of a potentiometer.

Origin

• ; both Old English and Frankish from Proto-Germanic *puttaz, from Proto-Indo-European *budnós. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Pot, Dutch pot, Low German Pott, German Pott, Swedish potta, Icelandic pottur, Old Armenian պոյտն.
• The sense of ruin or deterioration was originally an allusion to being chopped up and tossed in a pot like a piece of meat. The slang term for toilets and the lavatory derives from chamberpots although now usually encountered as potty during children's toilet training.
• Possibly a shortened form of Mexican Spanish potiguaya or potaguaya or potación de guaya, supposedly denoting a drink of wine or brandy in which marijuana buds were steeped.