ˈpot-ˌhunter
[f. pot n.1 + hunter.]
† 1. An opprobrious appellation: ? a sycophant, a parasite: cf. barnacle n.2 3 b. Obs.
| 1592 Nashe Four Lett. Confut. Wks. (Grosart) II. 242 This indigested Chaos of Doctourship, and greedy pothunter after applause, is an apparant Publican and sinner. 1592 Greene Blacke Bks. Messenger Wks. (Grosart) XI. 7 The verser in conny-catching is called the Retriuer And the Barnacle, the pot hunter. 1592 Admonition Bk. Emm. Coll. Cambr. in 4th Rep. Hist. MSS. Comm. 420/1 Mr. Catsby..for saying my Lord [of Routland] hymself was but a child, and that he was maintained by pott-hunters..was admonished. |
2. ‘A sportsman who shoots anything he comes across, having more regard to filling his bag than to the rules which regulate the sport’ (Slang Dict. 1860). Also fig.
| 1781 W. Blane Ess. Hunting (1788) 102 As arrant a Pot⁓hunter as ever England bred, that..had not scrupled to kill a Buck or Doe at any season. 1825 Bull baiting i. in Houlston Tracts I. xxvii. 9 There's nothing a regular Shot would be sooner chafed at than being called a Pot-hunter. 1856 Porter's Spirit of Times 25 Oct. 126/1 It is disgusting to every lover of fair play to witness the ravages committed by the pot-hunter, who coolly murders the deer by torch-light from a dug-out or canoe. 1878 C. Hallock Amer. Club List & Sportsman's Gloss. p. ix/1 Pot-hunter, one who hunts or fishes for profit, regardless of close seasons, the waste of game, or the pleasure to be derived from the pursuit. 1895 J. G. Millais Breath fr. Veldt (1899) 109 My hope is that some traveller..who is something more than a pot⁓hunter, may..send home to our Museum a series of the common white-quilled black Khoorhan. 1905 ‘O. Henry’ in N.Y. World Mag. 22 Oct. 8/1 He was an old man, with a slow and limping gait, so a pot-hunter of a newly-licensed chauffeur ran him down one day when livelier game was scarce. 1922 Joyce Ulysses 158 Lady Mountcashel..rode out with the Ward Union staghounds... Uneatable fox. Pothunters too. 1936 Sun (Baltimore) 28 Feb. 11/5 Hundreds of ducks flying northward have been slaughtered. The chief offenders..are the so-called ‘pot-hunters’, who hunt for profit and rent duck blinds to sportsmen. |
3. One who takes part in any contest or competition merely for the sake of winning a prize. (With allusion to pot n.1 1 g.)
| 1873 Slang Dict., Pot-hunter, a man who gives his time up to rowing or punting, or any sort of match in order to win the ‘pewters’ which are given as prizes. University... Now much used in aquatic and athletic circles; and..applied, in a derogatory sense, to men of good quality who enter themselves in small races they are almost sure to win. 1883 Pall Mall G. 7 July 6/1 The increase..in the number of ‘pot-hunters’, as they are called—an epithet which originated in the early days of the Wimbledon meeting, when prizes were given ‘in kind’, and not as now in money. 1886 Cycl. Tour. Club Gaz. IV. 122 To tempt..many a ‘pot⁓hunter’ who follows racing for what he can get out of it. 1912 A. Bennett Matador 22 He used to be what they called a pot-hunter, a racing bicyclist. 1942 Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Slang §636/21 Contestant for a prize, mug hunter or chaser, pot hunter. |
4. One who finds or obtains objects of archaeological interest or value, esp. by unscientific or illicit methods, and for the purpose of private collection or profit.
| 1958 N.Y. Times Mag. 16 Feb. 48/3 This satisfaction..is the big distinction between the new species of digger and the acquisitive ‘pot hunter’, that bane of archaeological scientists. Souvenir-hunting amateurs are still with us, of course. 1966 Robbins & Irving Amat. Archaeologist's Handbk. v. 83 This chapter might carry the subtitle: ‘Pothunters, beware!’ A pothunter is a person who visits a site in order to find and hoard as many ‘relics’ as possible. 1967 L. Deuel Conquistadors without Swords iv. 52 Museum collections all over the world owe most of their treasures to disreputable pothunters. 1973 New Yorker 24 Mar. 102/2 Stewart L. Peckham, chief archaeologist of the Museum of New Mexico,..was distressed to find that almost all the major Mimbres sites..had been ravaged by pot-hunters. |
So ˈpot-ˌhunting n. and a. (in senses corresponding to 2, 3 and 4 above).
| 1808 W. Cobbett in L'Estrange Friendships Miss Mitford (1882) I. 43 Rush they go, the pot-hunting crew, into that manor. 1862 Sat. Rev. 5 July 7 The sort of pot-hunting known at Wimbledon and elsewhere as Pool, where the value of a bull's-eye is much more considered than the credit of handling with success the Queen of weapons. 1869 Harper's Mag. Jan. 157/1 This is regarded by many Plains men as a kind of pot-hunting, that is not entitled to the name of sport, and only to be resorted to for the purpose of securing the meat needed as food. 1881 Tylor Anthropology ix. 210 The quest of food (now often contemptuously called ‘pot-hunting’) becomes subordinate to the excitement of the chase. 1881 Gd. Words XXII. 46/1 Some men are too fond of starring or pothunting at ‘sports’. 1893 Sinclair & Henry Swimming (Badm. Libr.) 369 Some swimmers seem able..to stand the strain of racing night after night... The rage for pot-hunting is apparently unconquerable. 1946 L. P. Hartley Sixth Heaven ii. 47 I'm doing a bit of pot-hunting and have to attend classes and pow-wows. 1956 A. R. King in Amer. Antiquity Apr. 423/2 Scientific archaeology carries more satisfaction than ‘pot-hunting’ and ‘treasure troving’. 1973 New Yorker 24 Mar. 100/3 Poverty and desperation are extenuating factors in Bangladesh, but not in the United States, where pot-hunting is a weekend hobby of the more affluent. The rise in prices for American-Indian art..has had disastrous consequences for scholarship. |