DCHP-1 Online

pothole

• 1a † n. See 1824 quote at kettle ((1)) (def. 2).

  See also: kettle ((1)) (def. 2)  

  • 1880  Its rocky sides have been rent and peeled by the current, here scooped into great pot-holes, there seamed with broad fissures, now broken into jagged edges, now worn into smooth curves.
  • 1921  More than a century after Mackenzie passed, I myself stood at this spot and saw some of these interesting "pot holes."
  • 1956  This pothole-in-the-making is near the foot of the rapid and in very deep water, but the whirling rock can be heard as it grinds itself away.

• 1b n. a circular depression in any rock surface.

  • 1913  (1917)  The trail is only about three hundred feet long and crosses rough rocks, in which many pot-holes have been worn, hence the name [Kettle Portage].
  • 1959  A good thirty feet above the high-tide mark on the rocks, we came to a square stone building nestled in a rock pothole.

• 2a † n. a.t a hole in a road, especially one caused by water erosion or frost damage. See also pitch-hole (def. 2).

  • 1953  (1958)  We . . . took a right-angle turn down a narrow little lane with ruts and potholes that nearly shook the car apart.
  • 1963  "Ottawa is a city famous for its potholes, and also for its pot bellies," said Kingston Labor Council's new President as he took office Tuesday.

• 2b n. an airpocket which causes an aircraft to bump.

  • 1963  [Headline] 68 Survive Wild Ride [as] Airliner Hits Pothole in the Sky

• 3a n. West See 1902 quote.

  See also: muskeg (def. 4)  pothole lake  sink-hole (def. 2)  slough  (def. 1)  

  • 1902  (1956)  In natural depressions of the soil, of course, water had gathered and formed so-called "pot-holes"--circular basins of a swampy nature, generally shallow. The "potholes" usually have a heavy growth of wild hay, though occasionally one was met with in which the vegetation was stunted, because of the presence of some alkali.
  • 1955  We held the cattle on the pothole for two days, with two of us riding twelve-hour shifts around them.
  • 1963  Show me the man who doesn't get the shivers when half-a-dozen greenhead mallards start sideslipping into the pothole in front of him. . .

• 3b n. West an artificial dam or reservoir.

  See also: dugout (def. 3)  

  • 1957  With its growing irrigation, power and agricultural demands for impounding water Alberta is becoming a land of man-made lakes and pot-holes filled with millions of fighting trout, where once there were only windswept expanses of gently-rolling prairie.
  • 1957  Today any southern Albertan can catch a creelful of trout simply by driving or strolling to the nearest government-planted pothole, a term loosely used on the prairie to embrace, in this case, any small landlocked lake, or dam.

• 4 n. North an organic bog which is a brown to black mixture of water and living and dead vegetation often covered with a carpet of sphagnum or other mosses and often of considerable depth.

  See also: muskeg (def. 1)  

  • 1921  The breath of the horses was a steam cloud; the potholes in the marsh were grey and lifeless with ice.
  • 1950  There were, so far as the Indians could recall, no large lakes, but the ground was swampy, muskeg and full of potholes in the summer-time.
  • 1959  They [geese] need pothole muskeg--muskeg that's full of small lakes and ponds with little islands in them.

• 5 n. B.C. Interior See 1961 quote at hole (def. 1).

  See also: hole (def. 1)  

  • 1955  Our plan had been to throw the cattle into Chinee Lake pothole this night. . . .
  • 1962  It was in Bridge Lake country that Bill Wilson . . . had his pothole homestead. . .

• 6 n. an underground cave.

  See also: hell-hole  

  • 1965  Rumor also suggests that the most interesting of the underground potholes fell victim to progress, having been in the path of the right-of-way for the railway when it was built.