pottlepot

English

Etymology

pottle +‎ pot

Noun

pottlepot (plural pottlepots)

1. (archaic) A pot or vessel containing two quarts (four pints), especially one used to hold alcohol.
   • 1848, Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England: From the Norman Conquest, page 122:

     ... and help her with the yeast , and filling the pottlepots of ale out of the tubs.

   • 1876, William Chaffers, Marks and Monograms on Pottery & Porcelain of the Renaissance and Modern Periods, page 62:

     The largest, or “galonier,” twelve inches high, contains eight pints; the next or “Pottlepot,” about nine inches and a half high, holds four pints; another, eight inches and a half high, a quart; and the smallest, six inches in height, one pint.

   • 1877, A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: Hamlet. 1877, page 78:

     Barnaby Rich is exceedingly angry with the inventor of the custom, which, however, with a laudable zeal for the honour of his country, he attributes to an Englishman, who, it seems, "had his brains beat out with a pottlepot" for his ingenuity  […]

   • 1905, Mary Catherine Rowsell, The Life-story of Charlotte de la Trémoille: Countess of Derby, page 66:

     […] notably — for a vacuum, and that in a few years the lack of all rational diversions, the pulling down of maypoles, the silencing of all music but psalm-singing, would drive man and woman to try and drown care in the pottlepot.

   • 2020(?), George Payne Rainsford James, Mary of Burgundy: The Revolt of Ghent, Library of Alexandria (→ISBN)

     Maillotin du Bac seemed determined that, as far as the quality of his favours went, no jealousy should exist between the trencher and the pottlepot.

2. (archaic) An alcoholic, a drunkard.
   • 1862, Temple Bar: A London Magazine for Town and Country Readers, page 307:

     It is true that he departed in quest of some Carpenter's Tools, which he declare would do the job quite as well; but, again to my good luck, the carpenter was as Rare a pottlepot as he, and they two took to boiling rum in a calabash and [drinking].

   • 1894, Austin Dobson, At the Sign of the Lyre, page 210:

     "Thou art no man (she saith) —thou art a Pottlepot!" "No man," I saith. "No man!" she saith. And "Pottlepot" thereto! "Thou sleepest like our dog all day; thou drink'st as fishes do."

   • 1901, Sir Walter Scott, The Abbot: Being The Sequel to The Monastery, Library of Alexandria, →ISBN:

     […] wains—I trust it is only the medicine of the pottlepot, (being the only medicamentum which the beast useth,) which hath caused him to tarry on the road.