teapot, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

teapot n.

1. a black person [the colour of the typical brown/black teapot].

1815		‘No Slave Trade’ in Vocal Mag. 2 Jan. 20: ‘Lilly, you my dear black tea-pot too;’ one pretty girl say, ‘tankee missee,’ me say.
1835		G. Kent Modern Flash Dict.
1845		D. Corcoran Pickings from N.O. Picayune (1847) 38: O, you japanned taypot that’s for iver spoutin; come down and mind your work.
1848		Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open.

2. a total abstainer.

1885		Dly Gaz. for Middlesborough 6 Nov. 3/4: ‘Will you have a drink?’ [...] ‘No thank-you; I am a teetotaler,’ she civilly replied. ‘Good heavens!’ I thought; ‘a tea-pot in this hole; it can’t be’.
1893		P.H. Emerson Signor Lippo 52: ‘He’s not a teapot because he likes it.’ [...] ‘He must be a teapot in the firm he travels for.’.
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 241/2: Tea-pot (Peoples’). Total abstainer. This phrase is a reduction of tea-pot sucker.

3. one who drinks an excessive amount of tea; often as old teapot, regular teapot.

1893

P.H. Emerson Signor Lippo 52: Old Teapot here can come and have pop like the little boys’.

4. (US juv.) the penis.

1967

‘Philip Barrows’ Whores, Queers & Others I [ebook] Stop that! Only naughty little boys touch their teapots when they don't have to go weewee [ibid.] He took his teapot out and carefully peed on the butt.

5. (UK juv.) a male homosexual [the children’s song ‘I’m a little teapot, short and stout...’ and the gestures that accompany it; while designed to represent the teapot’s handle and spout, they can also be interpreted as those of the stereotyped camp gay man with a ‘broken’, drooping wrist].

2001

OnLine Dict. of Playground Sl. 🌐 teapot n. effeminate homosexual.

SE in slang uses

In compounds

teapot sucker (n.)

a tee-totaller or other spoilsport.

1900		Sporting Times 24 Mar. 2/1: The teapot-sucker, the suppressor of every form of amusement, the anti-everythinger, the Pharisee who strains at the White Horse brandy, and swallows alcoholic ginger-ale [...].
1999		Roger’s Profanisaurus in Viz 98 Oct. 27: teapot sucker n. A bottom-shelf drinker; A teetotaller.

In phrases

break the teapot (v.)

to return to drinking after a period of abstention.

1900

Regiment 27 Jan. 288/1: [S]hould he happen to be induced by a chum to ‘have a wet,’ he is said to have ‘broke out,’ or ‘gone off the tack,’ or ‘broken the teapot’.

have one’s teapot mended (v.) (also get it down the spout)

(UK prison) to regain the privilege – earned by good behaviour – of replacing the usual gruel with tea.

1877

Five Years’ Penal Servitude 86: When a man is restored to his class, and has his tea, it is said he has ‘had his teapot mended’ or ‘got it down the spout.’.