potbelly
Pluralpotbellies
- 1A prominent, rounded stomach that bulges out over the waistline; a paunch.
Like a balloon slowly swelling out above the waistband.
Years of beer and late-night snacks gave him a noticeable potbelly.
The trainer designed a routine aimed at trimming his stubborn potbelly.
Note
Two everyday words, pot and belly, joined into one picture: a stomach rounded like a cooking pot. That picture runs through the whole word, since the stove and the pig are named for the same bulge. The plural is potbellies. The adjective appears both closed and hyphenated, potbellied or pot-bellied, so either spelling is safe as long as a text uses one consistently.
- 2Short for potbelly stove.
The old cabin's only heat came from a cast-iron potbelly in the corner.
She stoked the potbelly with another log before the storm rolled in.
Note
Here the modifier has swallowed its noun. Potbelly stove drops stove, and the shape word stands for the whole appliance: a cast-iron stove with a rotund firebox that burns coal, coke, wood or charcoal. Setting usually settles the meaning, because a potbelly in a cabin corner is heat and not a waistline. Where the two could collide, the full potbelly stove is the clearer choice.
- 3Short for Vietnamese pot-bellied pig.
She keeps a potbelly as a house pet and walks it on a leash.
Their potbelly rooted around the backyard all afternoon.
Note
Casual speech trims a long breed name down to its most vivid part. Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, also called simply potbellied pig, loses both the nationality and the animal, and only the shape survives. The short form suits easy talk among owners and neighbors. In formal writing the full name is better, because it rules out any reading as a person's paunch.
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Origin
A compound of "pot" and "belly".