Definition 1: A deep hole in the ground; a deep, usually round vessel for storage and cooking; the cranium, skull (archaic).

Usage 1: Pot-hole is pleonastic, to use a recent word of the day, since a pot is a hole. A bad road has pots in it. The "jack-pot" was originally the pot in a game of draw-poker, which accumulated until one player had a pair of jacks or better. "Pot luck" has always been your luck in being offered whatever is being cooked in the pot when you visit someone's home. The cook on a New England whaler was called a "pot wrestler." Guess why.

Suggested usage: Most of us know how to use today's word; the interest is in its pliable meaning, so let's look at some more uses of it. A "pot shot" was one taken at game merely for the purpose of filling the pot for a meal rather than for sport or trophy mounts. Hence its meaning, "an easy shot." A "pot-boiler" shares the same thought: a book written to boil the food pot rather than to create a modern masterpiece. A crackpot, originally a "cracked pot," harks back to the days when pot meant "skull, cranium."

Etymology: Nothing is known for sure as to the origin of "pot." It has been speculated that late Latin had a word "pottus" in it since French has the same word "pot" (as in pot pourri, literally "rotten pot"), borrowed by an English speaker whose French, apparently, was shaky. However, there is no written record of the Latin word. It is related to "porridge," an altered form of pottage "what is in the pot." (We owe Marilyn Macmillan a pot of thanks for seeing the miracles in the smallest of lexical items. It is not only the long words that tell us about ourselves and our journey.)