ˈwatering-pot
[watering vbl. n.]
1. A portable vessel for watering plants; now usually of tinned iron, and furnished with a long tubular spout, often ending with a rose for scattering the water.
| 1580 Hollyband Treas. Fr. Tong, Vne Chantepleure, a garden pot, a watering pot, the toppe of a Cesterne. 1620 I. C. Two Merry Milk-maids i. ii. B 4 What, doe you weepe Brother? Dor. Like a Watring-Pot; he wud make an excellent Fountaine in the midst of a Garden. 1633 G. Herbert Temple, Affliction ‘Broken in pieces’ ii, As wat'ring pots give flowers their lives. 1660 Boyle New Exp. Phys.-Mech. xxxiii. 247 A Gardiner's Watering Pot shap'd conically, or like a Sugar-Loaf. 1752 Phil. Trans. XLVII. 546 The Duke then took one of his silver watering-pots, which was two feet and an half high. 1842 Loudon Suburban Hort. 499 After which the whole of the hillocks should be watered, from a watering-pot with the rose on. 1915 ‘Q’ (Quiller-Couch) Nicky-Nan xiii. 165 She set down her watering-pot. |
2. Zool. A mollusc of the genus Aspergillum, so named from the shape of its shell. Also attrib. as watering-pot group, watering-pot shell.
| 1815 Burrow Elem. Conchol. 206 Serpula Aquaria, Watering-Pot. 1861 P. P. Carpenter in Rep. Smithsonian Instit. 1860, 249 The Watering-pots or Aspergillum group. At first sight a ‘Watering-pot shell’ would not be supposed to have any connection with ordinary bivalves. 1864–5 Wood Homes without H. v. 106 The Watering-pot Shell (Aspergillum) is well known to conchologists. 1885 Riverside Nat. Hist. (1888) I. 283 The most noticeable species is the ‘watering pot’ Aspergillum vaginiferum... This species comes from the Red Sea. |