flowerpot
See also: flower pot and flower-pot
English
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editEtymology
editPronunciation
edit- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈflaʊɚˌpɑt/
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈflaʊəˌpɒt/
Audio (US): (file)
Noun
editflowerpot (plural flowerpots)
- A pot filled with soil in which plants are grown.
- 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:
- 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.
- 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:
- 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.
- 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:
- 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.
- 2002 April 19, Suzanne Hamlin, “FAVORITES; One Terra-Cotta Pot. Add Lateral Thinking”, in The New York Times[1]:
- As a multifaceted kitchen enabler, nothing can quite supplant the gorgeous, timeless, ever-available, often dirt-cheap terra-cotta flowerpot.
- 2005 April 8, Brian Greene, “One Hundred Years of Uncertainty”, in The New York Times[2]:
- 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.
Derived terms
editTranslations
editcontainer in which plants are grown
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