potato

Less common meanings

4. 4
   sweet rootnounobsoletecountable

   A sweet potato: the trailing vine Ipomoea batatas or its sweet, edible tuberous root.

   Note

   Older English could name the sweet potato with the bare word, the meaning closest to the Taíno batata behind it. In early texts a "potato" may therefore be the sweet, vine-grown root rather than the nightshade tuber, and the context usually decides. Source

   Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts

   • Older English used potato without sweet to mean sweet potato, creating ambiguity in historical texts. blogs.loc.gov
   • Taíno batata meant sweet potato. en.wiktionary.org
5. 5
   worthless thingnoundatedcountable

   A person or thing regarded as having little worth or importance.

   Similarnobody, nonentity, cipher

   Oppositesomebody

   Note

   An old way of calling something worthless, much like "not worth a fig." In Tobias Smollett's The Reprisal (1757) a speaker does not value Monsieur de Champignon "a rotten potatoe," with the period spelling. The figure is typically framed as a negative, and a modern joke grows from it: the slow-gadget slang. Source

   Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 2 facts

   • The Reprisal is by Tobias Smollett and was first published in 1757; the bibliographic record identifies the original Baldwin edition. grubstreetproject.net
   • A speaker in the play says that he does not value Monsieur de Champignon "a rotten potatoe," using that spelling. en.wiktionary.org
6. 6
   disability slurnounslangoffensivecountable

   An offensive slang word for a person with an intellectual disability.

   The coach benched a player who had mocked his teammate's intellectual disability by calling him a potato.

   The camp counselor overheard a camper calling a boy with Down syndrome a potato and stepped in at once.

   UsageUse person with an intellectual disability instead.

   Note

   A slur that turns the "worthless" figure of the little-value sense against people with intellectual disabilities. It turns up in taunts and sneers, never as neutral description. Source

   Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 1 fact

   • The offensive disability sense is connected with the metaphor for a person or thing of little value; Wiktionary groups it under that metaphor. en.wiktionary.org
7. 7
   sock holenouncolloquialUKcountable

   A conspicuous hole worn through a sock or stocking, big enough to show the skin beneath.

   Mum sighed at the potato in my school sock and fetched the darning needle.

   By the end of term every sock he owned had a potato at the heel.

   UsageUsually a potato in a sock, at the heel or toe: socks full of potatoes.

   Similarhole

   Note

   A British household joke rather than a general word. In the UK a big hole in a sock can be called a potato, usually one at the heel or toe. It belongs to family talk and school-uniform complaints, and outside Britain it is likely to puzzle listeners. Source

   Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 1 fact

   • The sock-hole sense is labelled informal British English. en.wiktionary.org
8. 8
   verbslang

   In professional wrestling, to hit an opponent for real rather than in a staged way, especially with a hard blow to the head.

   Bradshaw doesn't find much humour in it though, and beats the tar out of Dustin, potatoing him with every blow.

   2014, James Dixon, Arnold Furious
9. 9
   verb

   To strike someone or something with a potato that is thrown or launched at them.
10. 10
    interjection

    The deep, throaty, rhythmic exhaust note produced by a V-twin engine, imitated as a repeated 'potato' sound.