[f. as prec. + POT sb.]
1. A covered pot for stewing meat, etc.
1628. Ford, Lover’s Mel., IV. ii. He chafes hugely, fumes like a stew-pot.
1806. Culina, 236. Put these into a stew-pot.
1883. ‘Annie Thomas,’ Mod. Housewife, 108. She is a venerable bird, and would have become the stew-pot better than the spit.
fig. 1899. Westm. Gaz., 5 April, 2/3. The very air, damp with the pestilential steam from the fever stew-pots of the slimy swamps and lagoons, is poison.
† 2. A dish of meat cooked in a stewpot; a stew. (Cf. stewed-pot.) Obs.
1542. Boorde, Dyetary, xii. (1870), 263. Sewe and stewpottes, and grewell made with otmell … can do lytel displeasure.
1605. Rowlands, Hell’s broke loose, To Rdr. They were constrayned to frie … Bootes in Steakes, and Stew-pottes of old Shoes.
¶ b. allusively. (See STEW sb.2) A prostitute.
a. 1613. Overbury, Characters, Sargeant (1618), N 7. Vpon one of the Sheriffs custards he is not so greedy, nor so sharp set, as at such a stew-pot.
† 3. (See quot.) Obs.
1688. R. Holme, Armoury, III. 424/1. A Stew or Stove or Stew pot covered…. This is a Vessel made of either Brass, Iron, or Copper; with high Feet and Rings on the sides by which it is removed … from place to place; in which a Fire is put … by which Rooms are made warm.
