Pottery

How to spell pottery

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce pottery

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pottery mean?

1. nounObjects made from fired clay, or the craft of shaping and firing such clay.

Pottery in a sentence

• She signed up for an evening class in pottery at the local studio.

• The museum displayed ancient pottery recovered from the riverbed.

Where does pottery come from?

Language of origin: French

This word traces back through Old French poterie, a term for the wares produced by a potier, that is a potter, with the underlying base being the simple word pot for an earthenware vessel. The element pot itself is of somewhat obscure origin; it appears in late Latin as potus and in early Germanic forms, but its ultimate source is uncertain. By the time English adopted the fuller form in the late medieval period, pottery had come to mean both the act of making fired clay vessels and the finished objects themselves, and later the workshop where they were produced. The familiar -ery ending, the same one found in bakery and brewery, marks a place or trade, which is why the spelling keeps -ery rather than -ary. Remembering that pottery is simply a potter plus -y keeps the doubled t and the soft ending in their proper places.

How the word is built

• pot (earthenware vessel)
• -er (agent: one who makes pots)
• -y (noun suffix denoting a craft or collective)