flowerpot
nounUS /ˈflaʊɚˌpɑt/ · UK /ˈflaʊəˌpɒt/
Etymology From flower + pot.
1
A pot filled with soil in which plants are grown.
- O Laurinella! little doſt thou wot How fraile a flower thou doſt ſo highly prize: Beauty's the flower, but love the flower-pot That muſt preſerve it, els it quickly dyes.1653, William Basse, “Clio, or The First Muse; in 9 Eglogues in Honor of 9 Vertues. As It was in His Dayes Intended. [Munday. Laurinella. Eglogue. Of True and Chast Love.]”, in J[ohn] P[ayne] C[ollier], editor, The Pastorals and Other Workes of William Basse. […] (Miscellaneous Tracts, Temp. Eliz. & Jac. I), [London: s.n.], published 1870, →OCLC, page 14:
- I hope you will think kindly of my whitened bones, and never have anything more to do with Greek writing on flower-pots, sir, if I may make so bold as to say so.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, “Job Has a Presentiment”, in She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC, page 247:
3 more examples
- Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with (by way of local color) on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust from which gnarled and rusty stalks thrust themselves up like withered elfin limbs.1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter I (Anarchy), pages 377–378:
- As a multifaceted kitchen enabler, nothing can quite supplant the gorgeous, timeless, ever-available, often dirt-cheap terra-cotta flowerpot.2002 April 19, Suzanne Hamlin, “FAVORITES; One Terra-Cotta Pot. Add Lateral Thinking”, in The New York Times:
- The reason we have for so long been unaware that the universe evolves probabilistically is that for the relatively large, everyday objects we typically encounter -- baseballs, flowerpots, the Moon -- quantum mechanics shows that the probabilities become highly skewed, hugely favoring one outcome and effectively suppressing all others.2005 April 8, Brian Greene, “One Hundred Years of Uncertainty”, in The New York Times:
- Derived terms
- flowerpotful, flowerpot red