Potter

How to spell potter

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce potter

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does potter mean?

1. nounA person who makes pots, bowls, and other objects from clay.
2. verbTo occupy oneself in a relaxed, unhurried way with small tasks.

Potter in a sentence

• noun

  The potter shaped the wet clay on a spinning wheel.

• verb

  On Sunday mornings he likes to potter about in the garden.

• noun

  We bought a hand-thrown mug directly from a local potter.

• verb

  She would potter around the kitchen, tidying drawers and sorting cupboards.

Where does potter come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

In the sense of a maker of earthenware, potter comes straight from the Old English pottere, simply 'one who makes pots', built on the noun pott (a rounded vessel) plus the agent suffix -er; that vessel word itself goes back through Latin to the late Latin pottus. The verb sense, meaning to busy oneself idly with small tasks, has a quite separate flavour: it is a frequentative form of the older verb 'pote', meaning to poke or push, so to potter is literally to keep poking about at little jobs. The verb settled into its modern 'fiddle around aimlessly' meaning by the 1700s, and in American English the same idea is usually spelled and pronounced 'putter'. Because the noun is one of the oldest occupational words in English, it kept its plain double-t spelling that mirrors the word 'pot' inside it, which is the easiest way to remember it. The surname Potter, made famous in fiction, preserves exactly this old trade name.

How the word is built

• pot (a vessel)
• -er (one who, or repeated/habitual action)