potboy
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English
Alternative forms
Etymology
Noun
potboy (plural potboys)
- A boy employed in a plant nursery to tap clay pots with a stick for their ringing sound – indicating whether the plant required watering. As the compost would dry out the clay pot would resonate at a different pitch.
- GC&HTJ 1985 volume 198 page 17
- A boy employed as waiter to serve (pots of) drinks, as in a tavern.
- 2012, Stephen King, 11/22/63, page 782:
- I put on my kitchen potboy disguise and rode down to B-1 in an elevator that smelled like chicken soup, barbecue sauce, and Jack Daniel's.
- (British) A boy or man employed in a public house to collect empty pots or glasses.
- 1837, “Boz” [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], Sketches by Boz: Illustrative of Every-day Life, and Every-day People. The Second Series, London: John Macrone, […], →OCLC, chapter SEVEN DIALS, page 149:
- (“Hoo-roa,” ejaculates a pot-boy in a parenthesis, “put the kye-bosh on her, Mary.”)
Related terms
See also
References
- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Massachusetts, G.&C. Merriam Co., 1967