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From: jbuhler@rice.edu (Jeremy Daniel Buhler)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Potholes?
Date: 29 Feb 1996 01:54:19 GMT

I saw an interesting assertion today while browsing CNN's online service (http://www.cnn.com/). The technology section for 2/28/96 describes efforts by engineers to design a road surface which is less susceptible to potholes. My folk-etymology detector tripped when I read the following paragraph:

                However, the fight to improve potholes is
                nothing new. Our colonial forefathers were
                constantly patching roads. In fact, it's
                believed the first potholes date back to
                Roman times, when potters dug up hunks
                from the clay roads -- hence the name.

A quick check of Merriam Websters' Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Ed., suggests that the above etymology is pure folklore. According to this dictionary, the word 'pothole' dates back only to 1826 and refers to the pot-like shape of the hole.

Anyone care to confirm or deny? I'll try to check the Oxford English Dictionary before I go home tonight.

Jeremy "gone to pot" Buhler

From: jbuhler@rice.edu (Jeremy Daniel Buhler)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Potholes?
Date: 29 Feb 1996 04:58:01 GMT

Quoth Jeremy Daniel Buhler (jbuhler@rice.edu): [quoting from CNN article]

>                 believed the first potholes date back to
>                 Roman times, when potters dug up hunks
>                 from the clay roads -- hence the name.

> A quick check of Merriam Websters' Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Ed.,
> suggests that the above etymology is pure folklore. According to this

OK, here's the info from the OED:

'pot-hole' in the sense of "a deep hole of more or less cylindrical shape" was in use in 1826 by geologists and civil engineers to describe naturally-occurring holes, which were thought to be the result of water action. The holes in question were actually effects of glaciation. By 1878, the word was sometimes written without the hyphen.

In 1898, an author in the Archaeological Journal used "pot-hole" in the sense claimed above, towhit:

That the manufacture of pottery was carried on in Haying in former times is shown by the existence of 'pot-holes', i.e. holes from which clay has been taken.

However, this has nothing to do with defects in the surface of a road. The use of 'pot-hole' to describe bad roads is given in a news item from 1909, which complains that "artificial watering and constant scavenging" are ruining the local macadam roads. I'm not sure exactly was scavenged from these roads, but it wasn't clay - macadam roads are made of crushed stone and cement.

Roman roads, like macadam roads, were made primarily of stone rather than clay. Here's a description of the canonical Roman road from the Encyclopedia Britannica:

In its highest stage of development the Appian Way was constructed by excavating parallel trenches about 40 feet (12 metres) apart to mark its exact location and to indicate the nature of the subsoil. The foundation was then covered with a light bedding of sand or mortar on which four main courses were constructed; (1) a statumen layer of large flat stones 10 to 24 inches (250-600 millimetres) in thickness; (2) a rudus course of smaller stones mixed with lime about 9 inches (225 millimetres) thick; (3) the nucleus layer, about one foot (300 millimetres) thick, consisting of small gravel and coarse sand mixed with hot lime; and (4) on this fresh mortar a summa crusta, or wearing surface, of flint-like lava about six inches (150 millimetres) deep.

From the above information, I'm inclined to believe that the etymology of 'pothole' given in the CNN article is historically inaccurate at best. I suspect that the use in the sense of 'a road defect' arose from the geological meaning via civil engineering.

Jeremy "calling the kettle black" Buhler