Noun: pothole
| Singular | pothole |
| Plural | potholes |
Sample Sentences
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I was so tired that potholes, fumes and noise aside, I slept regardless, my head rag-dolling from side to side. [2005, Paul Carter, Don't Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs, Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, page 86:]
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The previous Elantra had three problems: The steering hero-worshiped Novocain, occupants grew hoarse from shouting over road noise, and large potholes betrayed a lack of structure. [2016 April 28, Tom Voelk, “Video Review: Hyundai Elantra Offers Fewer Curves, but a Better Ride”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 08 Nov 2020:]
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Labour's Shadow Transport Secretary Louise Haigh said: "There is a cost-of-living crisis, and the Prime Minister blew nearly £1m of public money on an utterly infeasible vanity project. That's enough to fill 18,000 potholes. This shows the Tories' sheer disrespect for public money." [2022 February 9, “Network News: Prime Minister "blew nearly £1m" on Northern Ireland bridge study”, in RAIL, number 950, page 20:]
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2002, May-June, Grand River Conservation Authority (Canada) Newsletter
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The earliest ideas on the creation of potholes are that they were associated with "moulins de glacier" (glacier mills) formed where surface streams on glaciers and ice sheets fall into holes in the ice. Water entering these surficial holes was believed to impact on the bedrock beneath creating a large pothole. The "Moulin Hypothesis", first suggested in 1874, continued to be accepted by many authors until the 1950s. However, commencing in the 1930s, other authors have suggested dissatisfaction with the moulin hypothesis, largely on the grounds that it failed to explain how ice could remain stable long enough for the "giant" potholes to form and why many potholes (like those at Rockwood) were present in large numbers.
Nouns inflected like pothole
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From dialectal pot (“pit, hollow, cavity”) + hole. The "cave" senses, attested since at least 1809 (as pot-hole), may be from Middle English pot, potte (“a deep hole for a mine, or from peat-digging”), of uncertain origin; perhaps related to English pit, pote, or pot. Compare Scots pott, patt (“a pit dug in the ground; coalpit”). See: Middle English Nouns '
pot', English Nouns '
pit'.