pothole
/pˈɑthˌoʊl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.71 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A shallow pit or other edged depression in a road's surface, especially when caused by erosion, weather or traffic.
noun
A pit formed in the bed of a turbulent stream.
noun
A pit resulting from unauthorized excavation by treasure-hunters or vandals.
noun
A hyperlink with text displayed on a page that is different from the title of the page to which the text links; a piped link.
Slang
Example Sentences
- "I was so tired that potholes, fumes and noise aside, I slept regardless, my head rag-dolling from side to side."
- "The previous Elantra had three problems: The steering hero-worshiped Novocain, occupants grew hoarse from shouting over road noise, and large potholes betrayed a lack of structure."
- "Labour's Shadow Transport Secretary Louise Haigh said: "There is a cost-of-living crisis, and the Prime Minister blew nearly £1m of public money on an utterly infeasible vanity project. That's enough to fill 18,000 potholes. This shows the Tories' sheer disrespect for public money.""
- "2002, May-June, Grand River Conservation Authority (Canada) Newsletter The earliest ideas on the creation of potholes are that they were associated with "moulins de glacier" (glacier mills) formed where surface streams on glaciers and ice sheets fall into holes in the ice. Water entering these surficial holes was believed to impact on the bedrock beneath creating a large pothole. The "Moulin Hypothesis", first suggested in 1874, continued to be accepted by many authors until the 1950s. However, commencing in the 1930s, other authors have suggested dissatisfaction with the moulin hypothesis, largely on the grounds that it failed to explain how ice could remain stable long enough for the "giant" potholes to form and why many potholes (like those at Rockwood) were present in large numbers."
- "Stoves with two or more potholes The normal single-pot stove in which the pot sits on top, rather than being sunk into the pothole, has a major limitation."
Etymology
From dialectal pot (“pit, hollow, cavity”) + hole. The "cave" senses, attested since at least 1809 (as pot-hole), may be from Middle English pot, potte (“a deep hole for a mine, or from peat-digging”), of uncertain origin; perhaps related to English pit, pote, or pot. Compare Scots pott, patt (“a pit dug in the ground; coalpit”).