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pothole
DCHP-1 (pre-1967)
Entry from the DCHP-1 (pre-1967)
This entry may contain outdated or offensive information, terms, and examples.
1a†n.
See 1824 quote at kettle ((1)) (def. 2).
See: kettle ((1))(def. 2)
Quotations
1880
Its rocky sides have been rent and peeled by the current, here scooped into great pot-holes, there seamed with broad fissures, now broken into jagged edges, now worn into smooth curves.
1921
More than a century after Mackenzie passed, I myself stood at this spot and saw some of these interesting "pot holes."
1956
This pothole-in-the-making is near the foot of the rapid and in very deep water, but the whirling rock can be heard as it grinds itself away.
1bn.
a circular depression in any rock surface.
Quotations
1913
The trail is only about three hundred feet long and crosses rough rocks, in which many pot-holes have been worn, hence the name [Kettle Portage].
1959
A good thirty feet above the high-tide mark on the rocks, we came to a square stone building nestled in a rock pothole.
2a†n.
a.t a hole in a road, especially one caused by water erosion or frost damage. See also pitch-hole (def. 2).
Quotations
1953
We . . . took a right-angle turn down a narrow little lane with ruts and potholes that nearly shook the car apart.
1963
"Ottawa is a city famous for its potholes, and also for its pot bellies," said Kingston Labor Council's new President as he took office Tuesday.
2bn.
an airpocket which causes an aircraft to bump.
Quotations
1963
[Headline] 68 Survive Wild Ride [as] Airliner Hits Pothole in the Sky
3an. — West
See 1902 quote.
Quotations
1902
In natural depressions of the soil, of course, water had gathered and formed so-called "pot-holes"--circular basins of a swampy nature, generally shallow. The "potholes" usually have a heavy growth of wild hay, though occasionally one was met with in which the vegetation was stunted, because of the presence of some alkali.
1955
We held the cattle on the pothole for two days, with two of us riding twelve-hour shifts around them.
1963
Show me the man who doesn't get the shivers when half-a-dozen greenhead mallards start sideslipping into the pothole in front of him. . .
3bn. — West
an artificial dam or reservoir.
See: dugout(def. 3)
Quotations
1957
Today any southern Albertan can catch a creelful of trout simply by driving or strolling to the nearest government-planted pothole, a term loosely used on the prairie to embrace, in this case, any small landlocked lake, or dam.
1957
With its growing irrigation, power and agricultural demands for impounding water Alberta is becoming a land of man-made lakes and pot-holes filled with millions of fighting trout, where once there were only windswept expanses of gently-rolling prairie.
4n. — North
an organic bog which is a brown to black mixture of water and living and dead vegetation often covered with a carpet of sphagnum or other mosses and often of considerable depth.
See: muskeg(def. 1)
Quotations
1921
The breath of the horses was a steam cloud; the potholes in the marsh were grey and lifeless with ice.
1950
There were, so far as the Indians could recall, no large lakes, but the ground was swampy, muskeg and full of potholes in the summer-time.
1959
They [geese] need pothole muskeg--muskeg that's full of small lakes and ponds with little islands in them.
5n. — B.C. Interior
See 1961 quote at hole (def. 1).
See: hole(def. 1)
Quotations
1955
Our plan had been to throw the cattle into Chinee Lake pothole this night. . . .
1962
It was in Bridge Lake country that Bill Wilson . . . had his pothole homestead. . .
6n.
an underground cave.
See: hell-hole
Quotations
1965
Rumor also suggests that the most interesting of the underground potholes fell victim to progress, having been in the path of the right-of-way for the railway when it was built.