Chapter Pot-boilers to Pragmatic Sanction of P by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Pot-boilers to Pragmatic Sanction

Pot-boilers Articles written for periodicals or publishers, and pictures of small merit drawn or painted for the sake of earning daily bread, or making the pot supply needful food.

Pot-luck Come and take pot-luck with me. Come and take a family dinner at my house. The French pot au feu is the ordinary dinner of those who dine at home.

Pot Paper A Dutch paper; so called from its bearing a pot as its water-mark.

Pot-Pourri (French). A mixture of dried sweet-smelling flower-petals and herbs preserved in a vase. Also a hotch-potch or olla podrida. In music, a medley of favourite tunes strung together. (See Pasticcio .)
   Pourri means dead [flowers], and pot-pourri, strictly speaking, is the vase containing the sweet mixture.

Pot Valiant Made courageous by liquor.

Pot-de-Bière French slang for an Englishman.

Pot of Hospitality (The). The pot au feu which in Ireland used to be shared with anyone who dropped in at meal-times, or required refreshment.

“And the `pot of hospitality' was set to boil upon the fire, and there was much mirth and heartiness and entertainment.”- Nineteenth Century, Oct., 1891, p. 643.

Potage (Jean). The Jack Pudding of the French stage; very like the German “Hanswurst,” the Dutch “Pickel herringe,” and the Italian “Macaroni.”

Potato-bogle So the Scotch call a scarecrow. The head of these bird-bogies being a big potato or a turnip.

Potato-bury (A). A pit or trench for preserving potatoes for winter use. A turnip-bury is a similar pit for turnips.

Potato-talk (German, Kartoffel gesprach.) That chit-chat common in Germany at the five o'clock tea- drinkings, when neighbours of the “gentler sex” take their work to the house of muster and talk chiefly of the dainties of the table, their ingredients, admixture, and the methods of cooking there.

Poteen (pron, pu-teen). Whisky that has not paid duty. (Irish poitin, diminutive of poite, a pot.)

“Come and taste some good poteen
That has not paid a rap to the Queen.”

Pother or Bother. Mr. Garnett states this to be a Celtic word, and says it often occurs in the Irish translations of the Bible, in the sense of to be or troubled in mind. (Greek, potheo, to regret.)

“Friends, cried the umpire, cease your pother
The creature's neither one nor t'other."
The Chameleon

Pothooks The 77th Foot; so called because the two sevens resemble two pothooks. Now called the Second Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment. The first battalion is the old 57th.

Potiphar's Wife According to the Koran her name was Zuleika, but some Arabian writers call her Rail.

Pots A Stock Exchange term, signifying the “North Staffordshire Railway stock.” Of course, the word means “the potteries” (See Stock Exchange Slang .)

Potter To go poking about, meddling and making, in a listless, purposeless manner. Pudder, podder, pother, bother, and puddle are varieties of the same word. To pudder is to stir with a puddering pole; hence, to confuse. Lear says of the tempest- “May the great gods that keep this dreadful pudder o'er our head,” meaning confusion. To puddle iron is to stir it about with a puddering-pole.

Potwallopers, before the passing of the Reform Bill (1832), were those who claimed a vote because they had boiled their own pot in the parish for six months. (Saxon, to boil; Dutch, opwallen, our wallop.)
   Strictly speaking, a pot-walloper is one who wallops or boils his own pot-au-feu.