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Puddle vs Pothole - What's the difference?

puddle | pothole |

As nouns the difference between puddle and pothole

is that puddle is a small pool of water, usually on a path or road while pothole is a shallow pit or other edged depression in a road's surface, especially when caused by erosion by weather or traffic.

As a verb puddle

is to form a puddle.

puddle

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • A small pool of water, usually on a path or road.
  • * 1596 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , IV.5:
  • And fast beside a little brooke did pas / Of muddie water, that like puddle stank […].
  • * 1624 , , Generall Historie , in Kupperman 1988, p. 90:
  • searching their habitations for water, we could fill but three barricoes, and that such puddle , that never till then we ever knew the want of good water.
  • A homogeneous mixture of clay, water, and sometimes grit, used to line a canal or pond to make it watertight.
  • Verb

    (puddl)
  • To form a puddle.
  • To play or splash in a puddle.
  • To process iron by means of puddling.
  • To line a canal with puddle (clay).
  • To collect ideas, especially abstract concepts, into rough subtopics or categories, as in study, research or conversation.
  • To make (clay, loam, etc.) dense or close, by working it when wet, so as to render impervious to water.
  • To make foul or muddy; to pollute with dirt; to mix dirt with (water).
  • * Shakespeare
  • Some unhatched practice / Hath puddled his clear spirit.

    pothole

    English

    Etymology 1

    c 1826, from (etyl) + (hole)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A shallow pit or other edged depression in a road's surface, especially when caused by erosion by weather or traffic.
  • A pit formed in the bed of a turbulent stream.
  • * The earliest ideas on the creation of potholes''' are that they were associated with "moulins de glacier" (glacier mills) formed where surface streams on glaciers and ice sheets fall into holes in the ice. Water entering these surficial holes was believed to impact on the bedrock beneath creating a large '''pothole'''. The "Moulin Hypothesis", first suggested in 1874, continued to be accepted by many authors until the 1950s. However, commencing in the 1930s, other authors have suggested dissatisfaction with the moulin hypothesis, largely on the grounds that it failed to explain how ice could remain stable long enough for the "giant" '''potholes''' to form and why many '''potholes (like those at Rockwood) were present in large numbers. Grand River Conservation Authority (Canada) Newsletter of May-June 2002.
  • (geology) A vertical cave system, often found in limestone.
  • Synonyms
    * (large pit in the bed of a stream) giant kettle
    Derived terms
    * potholing

    See also

    * sinkhole

    Etymology 2

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (archaeology) A pit resulting from unauthorized excavation by treasure hunters or vandals.