pisspot, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

pisspot n.

also pee-pot, piss-barrel, pissing-pot, piss-tub

1. a chamberpot.

1526		C Mery Talys 14: Of the husbande that asked for master pyspot the physysyõ.
1539		R. Taverner Proverbes or Adagies of Erasmus lx Gvii: Put not meate into a pyspot.
1542		A. Boorde Introduction of Knowledge (1870) 236: Beware of emptynge of pysse-pottes.
1556		J. Withals Dictionarie in Eng. and Latine ‘Bedde chambre with the apparell’ P: A pisspotte, matula [...] Mingo, to pisse.
1560		E. More Schole house of Women Biii: A pyspot they brake vpon his pate [...] The pysse ran downe, by hys chekes.
1577		Misogonus in Farmer (1906) III iii: Some phisicary I’ll seek [...] There be some good men [...] Which would do’t for Godsake without prying in a pisspot.
1594		Nashe Terrors of the Night in Works III (1883–4) 251: All his pispots are crackt and wil no longer hold water.
1608		Pennyless Parliament of Thread-bare Poets 22: The Oil of Holly shall prove a present Remedy for a shrewd Housewife, accounting Socrates for a flat Fool, that suffered his Wife to crown him with a Piss-pot.
1615		Merie Tales of Jack of Dover (1864) 327: His wife [...] went up into the chamber, and out at the window powred downe a pisspot upon his head.
1628		Robin Goodfellow, His Mad Pranks and Merry Jests F1: When I finde a slut asleepe, I smatch her face if it be cleane, but if it be dirty I wash it in the next pisse pot that I find.
1632		R. Brome Covent-Garden Weeded II i: Why there’s a Lawyers trick right, make his weapon companion with his Pisse-pot.
1657		T. Jordan Walks of Islington and Hogsdon IV ii: You son of a Batchelor, do you throw your Pis-pots upon my head.
c.1660		‘The Sea Crabb’ in Furnivall & Hales Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript of Loose and Humorous Songs (1868) 99: ‘Alas!’ quoth the goodwiffe, ‘that ever I was borne, / the devil is in the pispott, & has me on his horne.’.
1673		Holborn Drollery 78: Some call’t the Devils Court; to make it true, Shew us his Lodging-Room, Bed, Pispot too.
1682		A. Radcliffe ‘A Call to the Guard by a Drum’ Poems 64: From your crack’d Earthen Pisspots where no Piss can stay.
1691		‘The Hectors & the Vintner’ in Ebsworth Merry Drollery Compleat (1875) 9: The Piss-pots are down, the candles are out, / The Glasses are broken and the pots flies about.
1693		Dryden Juvenal III 49: Bless the good Gods, and think thy chance is rare / To have a Piss-pot only for thy share.
1700		N. Ward The Rambling Rakes 4: Their Walls Adorn’d with Piss-tubs [...] And ’tis a strong Argument, that too many have more Respect for a Pissing-Corner.
1703		Apollo’s feast: or, Wits entertainment 3: The Mayor [...] asked what was the difference between a Rogue and a Fidler? to which he pertly replied, The same difference that is betwixt a Pisspot and a Jordan.
1707		N. Ward Wooden World 79: A Can as big and nasty as a Piss-barrel.
1709		N. Chorier (trans.) of Meursius ‘The Delights of Venus’ in Cabinet of Love (1739) 198: Weary with Toil, and spent, while Callus slept, / I from the Bed into the Chamber stept, / [...] I set the Piss Pot to my Cunt and piss’d.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy III 146: If Constable Kite or a Pis-Pot at night, / Should chance to be spilt on our pate.
1724		A. Ramsay Tea-table Misc. (1733) IV 426: The dregs of a piss-pot.
1733		Laugh and Be Fat 113: Maids need no more their silver Piss-pots scowr.
1756		E. Collins letter 29 June Misc. (1762) 35: Our Bulks and Pissing Pots have no longer immodest Inscriptions on them.
1771		Foote Maid of Bath Married I iv: It will be in the piss-pot presently.
c.1780		The only True LIST, of those celebrated SPORTING LADIES [broadsheet] An auxiliary band of good-natured girls [...] lodge at the Three Flying Piss Pots in Copulation Court.
1786		Young Coalman’s Courtship 8: She can do nothing but scour ladies piss pots.
1797		Bridges Burlesque Homer (4th edn) II 315: Old broken piss-pots, stones and bricks.
1831		Satirist (London) 8 May 37/3: ‘What!’ said the King, ‘am I to be treated like a p— pot, to be put out of sight?’.
1841		‘The Man Vot Claps ‘Em On The Peg’ Gentleman’s Spicey Songster 28: This lady she threw up the sash, Poor Don Giovanni! / He quickly heard the piss-pot slush, / About his ears it came down smash.
1888–94		‘Walter’ My Secret Life (1966) I 88: She stooped to set up the piss-pot which was laying on one side.
1900s		‘The Sea Crab’ G. Logsdon Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing (1995) 247: He put it in the piss pot safe for to keep.
1909–17		T.S. Eliot ‘Columbo & Bolo’ Inventions of the March Hare in Ricks (1996) 316: A great big whore with bloodshot eyes / She bitched him with a pisspot.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 505: You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in the different rooms.
1934		H. Roth Call It Sleep (1977) 308: My fodder has to give her a pee-pot twelve a’clock every night.
1939		H. Miller Tropic of Capricorn (1964) 51: Which reminded some sensitive soul of the piss-pot under the bed.
1949		H. Miller Sexus (1969) 142: I had the expression of a Jack the Ripper looking for a straw hat in a pisspot.
1951		in V. Randolph Pissing in the Snow (1988) 22: A fine big piss-pot for Christmas!
1953		I. Hamilton Till Human Voices Wake Us 35: [You] seize your pisspot amd [...] walk across the yard.
1958		(con. 1940s) B. Behan Borstal Boy 270: You jackamanape’s scourings of a lock hospital piss-pot.
1958		F. Norman Bang To Rights 122: He walked past me with his piss pot on his way to the recess.
1959		A. Burgess Beds in the East (1972) 527: The six of them sat round a table, Crabbe’s foot [...] clanking loudly against a concealed spittoon. ‘Ha ha,’ cried Tommy. ‘Don’t kick the pee-pot over.’.
1960		(con. 1940s) G. Morrill Dark Sea Running 97: The only light and air came through a hole [...] no bigger than a peepot.
1964		in E. Cray Erotic Muse (1992) 174: I wish I was the pee-pot, beneath my Lulu’s bed, / For every time she took a piss, I’d see her maidenhead.
1968		J. Alard He who Shoots Last 79: ‘There is something in that,’ agreed the preacher. ‘Dat’s wot da burglar said when he put his foot in da piss pot,’ cracked Wrecker.
1977		G.F. Newman A Prisoner’s Tale 105: He went out to the recess with his pisspot.
1982		G. Newbold Big Huey 28: At 8.30 every morning they unlocked us. We’d [...] empty our piss pots down the slopping-out basins in the ablutions rooms.
1983		S. Gee Never in My Lifetime in Best Radio Plays (1984) 60: Dotting about in front gardens in the lupins and the dog mess, waiting for some Paddy bastard to throw a pisspot on your head.
1993		(con. 1918) P. Barker Eye in the Door 37: That bloody, buggering bastard Lloyd George, he’s got a head on him like a forty-shilling pisspot.
1994		B. Payne Poor Behaviour 49: A man with ‘Animal’ tattooed on his forehead is emptying a piss-pot into Billy’s neighbour's bed.
1996		D. Healy Bend for Home 29: He has your eyes, Winnie. Like diamonds in a pisspot. [Ibid.] 263: She used to milk the cow into the fucking pisspot.
2004		N. ‘Razor’ Smith A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun 55: The piss-pot had to be scrubbed clean.
2004		R.G. Barrett Rosa Marie’s Baby (2013) [ebook] ‘She what? [...] Emptied a piss pot over him?’.
2001		D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 141/2: pisspot n. a cell chamberpot; in some prisons, inmates do not have flush toilets in their cells.
2024		C. Stella Joey Piss Pot 248: Joseph [...] grabbed his piss pot.

2. an unpleasant person.

1593		Nashe Four Letters Confuted in Works II (1883–4) 236: Had phisition Iohn liu’d, or not dyde, a little afore Dog-dayes, a sinode of Pispots would haue concluded, that Pierce Pennilesse should be confouded without repriue.
1655		Gossips Braule 7: Thou fetch a Warrant for mee Piss-pot; do, do, Ide have thee begin once.
1694		Motteux (trans.) ‘Epistles to Two Women’ Rabelais (1927) II 709: Old drunken piss-pot, sink of filth and sin.
1862		in J. Robertson Soldiers Blue and Gray (1998) 128: [The cavalry man branded the colonel a] ‘God damned fussy old pisspot’.
1936		J.T. Farrell World I Never Made 145: Jesus Christ, you little pisspot!
1973		G.V. Higgins Digger’s Game (1981) 20: Cheap ghinny pisspot.
1982		G.V. Higgins Patriot Game (1985) 113: That’s not what bothers me about Minihan [...] the little pisspot.
1997		T. Fontana ‘Visits’ Oz ser. 1 ep. 2 [TV script] Do you think if the Chevy plant was hiring I would choose to come here and babysit these pisspots.
1992		I. Rankin Strip Jack 177: The more trouble that piss-pot’s in, the better I’ll like it.
2004		L. Redhead Peepshow [ebook] There were suits, country guys, and the occasional tragic pisspot who’d been left behind by his friends.

3. a drunkard, an alcoholic; thus attrib.

1639		J. Taylor Crabtree Lectures 132: You may be ashamed [...] to bee such a common drunkard, a pisse-pot, a beast [...] every day foxed & at night brought home by a watchman.
1639		J. Taylor Juniper Lecture 36: You, you drunken sot, you pisse-pot, know not when you have sufficient; thus to come home reeling and staggering.
1862		letter in J.M. McPherson For Cause & Comrades (1997) 56: Lawton is a God damned fussy old pisspot utterly incompetent for the position he holds [...] that damned Col will be hung I fear like a mill stone about our necks.
1955		Accent XV 99: I was shorthanded tonight, so I snatched him from his pisspot of a mother. He’s pimply, but he looks already at home with that bottle.
1960		A. Seymour One Day of the Year (1977) II iii: Y’oughter see old Bert Charles, he’s eighteen stone an’pisspot, c’n ’e drink?
1965		L. Haylen Big Red 151: ‘Just a pisspot,’ said the Oracle, burying his nose in the pint pot. ‘Me, I can take it or leave it.’.
1971		K. Gilbert Cherry Pickers III i: You’re all a lot of superstitious old pisspots!
1984		‘Derek Raymond’ He Died with His Eyes Open 36: It need a man with better nerves than his to run that place, someone who wasn’t a total pisspot.
1985		B. Humphries Traveller’s Tool 102: If I had known what a mess those incestuous Tasmanian piss-pots were going to make all over the shag pile.
1996		J. Byrell Lairs, Urgers & Coat-Tuggers 232: [H]er dad was a pisspot who gambled away all the family funds and assets before hitting the toe and disappearing.
1998		P. Doyle (con. late 1950s) Amaze Your Friends (2019) 157: He’d gone to the pisspot clinic, left and stayed sober for a month.
1999		Indep. Mag. 12 June 7: You can no longer go on thinking of yourself as the scion of abstemious stock. Hallelujah! I am the fruit of pisspots.
2008		F. Dennis ‘Wilmot to Sackville and Villiers’ Homeless in my Heart 156: This piss-pot may not be denied, / A bowl of wine shall curb her pride.

4. the vagina.

c.1900

‘Ramrod’ Nocturnal Meeting 74: Wait till I get my spout fair into your piss-pot, and I’ll fuck your bloody arse off.

5. anywhere unpleasant, dirty, smelly etc.

1963		B. Hecht Gaily, Gaily 190: Is there a Journal man in this piss pot?
1964		J. Thompson Pop. 1280 in Four Novels (1983) 394: Ain’t every day they get to meet a real man in a pisspot of a town like this.
1979		M. Marsh Eating Cake 138: I’m so fucking sober! I should have thrown up all over that yellow pisspot of a bedroom.
1988		P. Anderson King of Ys II 64: That dreary pisspot of a town? Nay, not a town; a walled village.
1999		N. Cohn Yes We have No 287: It was a right pisspot, therefore Mal Platt’s favourite hangout.
2001		S. King Dreamcatcher 232: If it gets out of this pine-tree pisspot we’re in, everything changes.
2015		S. King Finders Keepers (2016) 266: He’s getting the hell out of this pisspot of a city.

6. a lavatory bowl.

1972		C. Bukowski Erections, Ejaculations etc. 189: Running back to some urine-stained pisspot and letting go.
1982		G.V. Higgins Patriot Game (1985) (1985) 207: [of a lavatory] Where ’sa pisspot?

In compounds

Piss Pot Hall (n.) [Dr Henry Sacheverell (c.1674–1724) was a High Church and high Tory cleric, who preached two sermons in 1709 that resulted in his impeachment on charges of seditious libel. He was condemned, but received so light a punishment as to claim victory. His supporters were as vehement as the unknown potter. The Rector of Whitechapel commissioned an altarpiece in which the figure of Judas Iscariot was represented by that of the Dean of Peterborough, one of the Doctor’s most virulent critics]

see cit. 1788.

c.1786		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Piss Pot Hall. A house at Clapton, near Hackney, built by a Potter chiefly out of the Profits of Chamber Pots, in the bottom of which the Portrait of Dr. Sacheverel was depicted.
1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn) [as cit. 1786].
1811		Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1786].

pisspot parade (n.)

(N.Z. prison) the morning emptying out of cell chamberpots.

1999

D. Looser ‘Boob Jargon’ in NZEJ 13 34: pisspot parade n. The emptying out of cell chamberpots.

pisspot-peeper (n.)

see piss prophet under piss n.

In phrases

do it on the pisspot (v.)

(N.Z. prison) to serve one’ (usu. short) setence without stress.

2001

D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 141/2: do it on the pisspot to serve one's sentence with ease (usually applied to a short sentence).

know the pisspot from the handle (v.)

(US tramp) to be wise.

1991

O.D. Brooks Legs 2: I’m not a brainy guy. I’m just road smart. I’ve been traveling enough to be able to tell the pisspot from the handle, and I know a jungle buzzard when I see one.