Definition of "pothole"

Labour's Shadow Transport Secretary Louise Haigh said: "There is a cost-of-living crisis, and the Prime Minister blew nearly £1m of public money on an utterly infeasible vanity project. That's enough to fill 18,000 potholes. This shows the Tories' sheer disrespect for public money."

2022 February 9, “Network News: Prime Minister "blew nearly £1m" on Northern Ireland bridge study”, in RAIL, number 950, page 20

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.

2002, May-June, Grand River Conservation Authority (Canada) Newsletter

Stoves with two or more potholesThe normal single-pot stove in which the pot sits on top, rather than being sunk into the pothole, has a major limitation.

1984, Stoves and trees: how much wood would a woodstove save if a woodstove could save wood?