Pots

How to spell pots

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pots

What does pots mean?

1. nounRound containers used for cooking, storing, or growing plants.
2. verbThird-person singular of to pot: to plant in or transfer into a container.

Pots in a sentence

• noun

  She scrubbed the dirty pots after the dinner party.

• verb

  Each spring she pots the herbs on the kitchen windowsill.

• noun

  The garden centre sold clay pots for the seedlings.

• verb

  The gardener carefully pots every cutting before the first frost arrives.

Where does pots come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The singular pot comes from Old English 'pott', a word for a round earthen or metal vessel, and it has close cousins across the Germanic languages, including the Old Norse 'pottr' and the Dutch and German 'pot'. The very same root spread into Old French as 'pot', so several European languages ended up sharing this small, practical word. Its ultimate source is uncertain, possibly a late Latin 'pottus', but the trail goes cold before the classical period. The plural 'pots' simply adds the regular '-s' ending, and the same form serves as the third-person singular of the verb 'to pot', meaning to plant something in a container. Because the word is so old and so common, its spelling has stayed reassuringly simple and phonetic.

How the word is built

• pot (container)
• -s (plural/3rd-person singular)