pot

The root pot is about as homely as a word can be. It comes from Old English pott, a rounded vessel for cooking or storing things, reinforced by Old French pot. Unlike most of the roots English borrowed from Latin and Greek, pot did not arrive through scholars or science — it came through the kitchen, and its family stays close to home: pots, the clay they are made of, the people who make them, and a few colourful idioms.

Start with the material. Pots were traditionally made of fired clay, so the craft of making them is pottery, and the craftsperson is a potter. (English speakers will recognise the surname Potter — originally an occupational name, 'one who makes pots.') Add another everyday word and you get teapot, a pot for brewing tea, and potted, an adjective for anything grown in a pot (a potted plant) or preserved in one (potted meat).

Then come the idioms, which are where pot gets its flavour. A potboiler is a book, film, or painting made quickly and cheaply just to earn money — the image is of an artist working only to 'keep the pot boiling,' i.e. to put food on the table. The verb potter (chiefly British) means to busy yourself with small, unimportant tasks, pottering about the house — as if fussing over little pots.

A couple of members come in sideways. Potpourri arrived from French, where it literally means 'rotten pot' (pot pourri) — originally a stew of mixed leftover meats slowly going off, then a jar of mixed dried flowers and spices, then any miscellaneous mixture. Potash is even more literal: it was made by soaking wood ashes in a pot and evaporating the water, leaving a potassium salt — 'pot ash.' The element potassium is named after it. Across the whole family, just keep picturing the simple round cooking pot, and the meanings stay within reach.