potted

1. 1
   adjective

   Grown or planted in a flowerpot rather than directly in the ground.

   The balcony was crowded with potted herbs and small citrus trees.

   He moved the potted fern indoors before the first frost.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of pot.

   The gardener potted dozens of seedlings before spring arrived.

   He potted the black ball to win the final frame.

   Note

   One spelling covers a whole family of actions, because potted is the past of every verb pot. Gardeners have potted seedlings, snooker players have potted the black, engineers have potted a circuit in resin, and hunters have potted game. The doubled t is ordinary spelling. Before a noun the same form turns adjective, as in potted meat, and from there grow the houseplant sense and the "ready-made" sense.

3. 3
   adjective

   Presented in a brief, summarized form that keeps only the main points.

   The textbook opens with a potted history of the revolution.

   She gave reporters a potted summary of the committee's findings.

   Similarcondensed, abridged, brief, concise, short

   Oppositedetailed, comprehensive, exhaustive, unabridged

   Note

   Histories and biographies are what usually get potted, and a potted history is the classic pairing. Jim Pickard's "It's not government that creates jobs" in FT Weekend (2023) has a potted history running from Beatrice Webb to Janet Yellen. Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood (2023) stretches the word to a potted version of a private conversation. Unlike the "ready-made" sense, this one puts the stress on brevity rather than staleness.

4. 4
   adjectivecolloquial

   Prepared in advance and kept ready, as though preserved by potting.

   He trotted out a potted answer that he had clearly used many times before.

   The brochure offered potted solutions to the most common travel problems.

   Similarprepared

   Oppositespontaneous, improvised, original

   Note

   Behind this sense is a jar of potted meat: something made earlier and sealed until it is needed. L. Susan Stebbing first put the figure into print in Thinking to Some Purpose (1939), calling "potted thinking" "a compressed statement to save us the trouble of thinking." That edge survives. A potted statement suggests words prepared beforehand and delivered unchanged, and the synonym prepared is the neutral way to say it.

5. 5
   adjectiveslang

   Intoxicated from drinking too much alcohol.

   They were thoroughly potted by the time the band stopped playing.

   She arrived potted and could barely make it up the stairs.

   Similarblasted, bombed, besotted, befuddled, boozy

   Oppositesober

   Note

   This is slang, best kept to casual talk. It usually comes after the verb, as in thoroughly potted, because before a noun potted reads as a plant or a jar: a potted guest sounds like something on the windowsill. The same spelling also means "ready-made" and "condensed," so let the sentence make the drinking obvious.

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