pot-hook, n.
(ˈpɒthʊk)
[f. pot n.1 + hook n.1]
1. a. A hook suspended over a fireplace, for hanging a pot or kettle on; a crook. b. An iron rod (usually curved) with a hook at the end, for lifting a heated pot, stove-lid, etc.
| 1467 Maldon, Essex, Court Rolls (Bundle 43 No. 14), ii. keteles; i. rakke; i par de pottehokes. c 1475 Pict. Voc. in Wr.-Wülcker 770/14 Hec capana, a pothoke. 1530 Palsgr. 257/1 Potte hokes, unes ancestes. 1698 Fryer Acc. E. India & P. 296 Setting their Earthen or Copper Pots there⁓on, not hanging them on Pothooks as we do. 1869 Mrs. Stowe Oldtown vi. (1870) 56 The great black crane..swung over it, with its multiplicity of pot-hooks and trammels. 1875 Knight Dict. Mech., Pot-hook, an S-shaped hook for suspending a culinary vessel from a chimney-crane. |
† c. pl. An instrument of punishment: see quot.
| 1707 Sloane Jamaica I. p. lviii, For running away they put..pottocks about their necks, which are iron rings with two long necks riveted to them. 1740 Hist. Jamaica vi. 159 The Chain and Pot-hooks are painted by his own Order in the Picture I spoke of just now. 1751 MacSparran Diary (1899) 52 He [a runaway slave in Rhode Island] had w{supt} is called Pothooks put about his Neck. |
2. a. A curved or hooked stroke made in writing; a crooked stroke or character, a scrawl; now usually applied to a hooked stroke, as an element of handwriting, made by children in learning to write. (Often with hanger: cf. hanger2 4 d.) Also colloq. pl. = shorthand.
| 1611 Cotgr., Pasté..a blurre, scraule, pothooke, or ill⁓fauoured whim-wham, in writing. a 1625 Fletcher & Mass. Elder Bro. i. ii, Bri. What have we here? Pot⁓hooks and Andirons! And. I much pity you, it is the Syrian Character, or the Arabick. 1690 Dryden Don Sebastian ii. ii, No peeping here, though I long to be spelling her Arabick scrawls and pot-hooks. 1710 Swift Lett. (1767) III. 61 You know such a pothook makes a letter; and you know what letter, and so, and so. 1738 [see hanger2 4 d]. 1799 B. Thompson Kotzebue's Stranger in Inchbald's Theatre I. 59 I'll go for his copy⁓book. He makes his pothooks capitally. 1809 [see hanger2 4 d]. 1846 Swell's Night Guide 128/1 Pothooks and hangers, short hand characters. 1887 G. R. Sims Mary Jane's Mem. 237 She's scrawling pothooks and hangers on a dirty sheet of paper. 1937 Partridge Dict. Slang 653/1 Pot-hooks and hangers, shorthand. 1939 Joyce Finnegans Wake 181 Instead of cluthoring those model households plain wholesome pothooks (a thing he never possessed of his Nigerian own) what do you think Vulgariano did but copy all their various styles of signature. 1957 R. S. Heinlein Door into Summer ii. 39 Darling, if this is a formal meeting, I guess you had better make pothooks. 1962 G. Lawton John Wesley's English 239 His [sc. Wesley's] works are full of proverbs, pothooks, allusions, idioms, colloquialisms, and slang. 1963 C. Mackenzie My Life & Times I. 156 From her I learnt to write pothooks and hangers and very soon to pass from pothooks and hangers to real letters. |
b. attrib. in reference to crabbed or illegible writing or unintelligible characters, or to shorthand.
| 1674 T. Flatman To Mr. Austin 9 No more, than read that dung fork, pothook hand That in Queen's Colledge Library does stand. a 1683 J. Oldham Charact. Old P. Rem. (1684) 112 Nonsence and the fittest Character to write it in, that Pot-hook-hand the Devil us'd at Oxford. [See Wood's Life & Times (O.H.S.) I. 498.] 1914 W. Owen Let. 2 Mar. (1967) 236 Thanks for the Catalogue of Pothook-books [Pitman's catalogue]. |
Hence (nonce-wds.) ˈpot-hook v. trans., to curve into the shape of a pot-hook; ˈpot-hooked a., having a pot-hook (sense 2); ˈpot-ˌhookery, making of pot-hooks or scrawls; ˈpot-hooky a., full of or consisting of pot-hooks, scrawled.
| 1795 T. Twining in Parr's Wks. (1828) VIII. 273 The Professor's conscribillatio is a more illegible..piece of pot⁓hookery than yours. 1867 Harper's Mag. Nov. 793 It was written in a cramped, pot-hooky hand. 1875 Maund in Alpine Jrnl. May (1876) 414 After packing myself away as well as I could in the shape of a pot-hook, Martin followed and pot-hooked himself alongside me. 1898 Chr. Murray in Daily News 27 Jan. 6/2 The Dreyfus letters very commonly have a curious pothooked starting point... They curl upwards at the start. There is nothing of the sort in the bordereau. |