quart-pot
a. A pot capable of containing the measure of a quart. Also Austral., a billy-can of this measure for boiling tea-water, etc.
| 1422–2 Abingdon Acc. (1892) 94 Item j quartpot. 1463 Bury Wills (Camden) 23 A quart pot of pewter. 1550 Crowley Epigr. 363 Go fyll me thys quarte pot. 1593 Shakes. 2 Hen. VI, iv. x. 16 Many a time..it hath seru'd me insteede of a quart pot to drinke in. 1613 Wither Abuses Stript i. v. 240 Sometime in reuenge the quart-pot flies. 1711 Steele Spect. No. 22 ¶5, I came in with a Tub about me, that Tub hung with Quart-pots. 1838 Dickens O. Twist xxv, A quart-pot..filled with gin and water. 1838 H. Capper South Australia (ed. 2) 71 List of other articles provided for the passengers.—One wooden mess bowl, one ditto platter, one mess bread basket, one tin quart-pot, two three-gallon hawse buckets.—For each mess of six passengers. 1863 [see sense b below]. 1870 Lowell Study Wind. 47 Quartpots are for muddier liquor than nectar. 1881 A. C. Grant Bush Life in Queensland I. v. 43 One of the quart-pots..was boiling madly. 1901 M. Franklin My Brilliant Career i. 4, I refilled the quart-pot in which we had boiled our tea with water from the creek. 1936 A. Russell Gone Nomad iii. 20 We had boiled the quartpots at a waterhole a mile or so back and were continuing on our way. 1941 Coast to Coast 155 He was a swaggie all right, with his roll of old blue blanket across his shoulders and his quart pot dangling from it. |
b. attrib., as quart-pot tea, Austral. (see quot. 1885).
| 1863 R. Henning Let. 29 June (1966) 131 We..then made a fire, boiled some ‘quart-pot tea’, and sat down..to enjoy our dinner. 1878 Mrs. H. Jones Long Years in Australia 87 Taking a long draught of the quart-pot tea. 1885 H. Finch-Hatton Advance Austral. 111 ‘Quart-pot tea’, as tea made in the Bush is always called... A tin quart of water is set down by the fire, and when it is boiling hard a handful of tea is thrown in. |