pottage

noun

pot·​tage ˈpä-tij How to pronounce pottage (audio)
: a thick soup of vegetables and often meat

Examples of pottage in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Some staple Nigerian dishes have gained popularity in the States, include Jollof rice, pounded yam and egusi, yam pottage (asaro) as well as rice and stew. Elizabeth Ayoola, Essence, 30 Sep. 2023 In effect, for a mess of pottage, a public school sold an inflated but permanent artistic legacy to a private citizen. Los Angeles Times, 4 Dec. 2022 That is what caused the Big 4 firms to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage by peddling bogus shelters around the turn of the millennium. Peter J Reilly, Forbes, 19 June 2021 Jamila’s bisque, a heady pottage of crawfish, spinach and zucchini, is a dish the restaurant normally serves at Jazz Fest, which of course also was canceled this year. Ian McNulty, NOLA.com, 7 Dec. 2020 Surely even medieval peasants sometimes stared into the middle distance and sighed over their barley pottage, longing for the next village fête day and a bit of carnivalesque mayhem. Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 20 Aug. 2020 Dinner will include traditional favorites as chine of roast pork, pottage of cabbage, leeks and onions, and Indian pudding. courant.com, 31 Oct. 2019 Indeed, for millennia, in the West as well as the East, bowls were the vessel from which ordinary people ate all their meals, because most cooking consisted of some kind of soup or stew or pottage, ladled from a common pot. Bee Wilson, WSJ, 13 July 2018 Yet there’s no glue — not a whiff of life or a single substantial, grounding directorial idea — that makes this pottage work scene to scene. Manohla Dargis, New York Times, 19 Oct. 2017

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pottage.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

Middle English potage, from Anglo-French, from pot pot, of Germanic origin; akin to Old English pott pot

First Known Use

13th century, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of pottage was in the 13th century

Dictionary Entries Near pottage

Cite this Entry

“Pottage.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pottage. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

pottage

noun
pot·​tage ˈpät-ij How to pronounce pottage (audio)
: a thick soup of vegetables or vegetables and meat
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