Meaning & use
pot-holing
Last updated
Meanings
noununcountableBritish
The hobby or sport of exploring natural underground caves and tunnels, often by crawling through narrow wet passages.
Grammar: No plural and no article: you say 'Pot-holing is dangerous', not 'A pot-holing is dangerous'.
Patterns
- go pot-holing
- a pot-holing trip
- take up pot-holing
They spent their holiday pot-holing in the limestone caves of northern England.
Pot-holing appeals to people who enjoy tight spaces and cold water.
She bought a helmet and a lamp before her first pot-holing trip.
noununcountablerare
The activity of digging or searching in the ground for old objects or minerals as a hobby.
Grammar: Used without an article, like other names of activities.
Patterns
- go pot-holing for something
A few enthusiasts go pot-holing for old bottles on the site of the former dump.
He describes weekend pot-holing for clay pipes as a harmless obsession.
Common combinations
- go pot-holing
- We go pot-holing most weekends in winter.
- a pot-holing club
- The university has a pot-holing club that meets on Thursdays.
- pot-holing equipment
- Good pot-holing equipment includes a helmet, a lamp and a strong rope.
- take up pot-holing
- He took up pot-holing after a friend showed him a local cave.
- a pot-holing accident
- Rescue teams trained for a pot-holing accident in the flooded tunnels.
Synonyms and how they differ
- caving
- The usual general word for exploring caves; it is more common in American English and sounds less specialized than pot-holing.
- spelunking
- Mainly American and often used by people who do it as a serious hobby; pot-holing is the everyday British term.
Word family
- pot-holer noun
- A person who goes pot-holing.
- pot-hole noun
- A deep natural hole or cave in rock; also a hole in a road surface.
- pot-holed adjective
- Full of holes, used especially of a road surface.
Commonly confused: pot-holing or potholing?
pot-holing vs potholing
This is the same word written without the hyphen; both spellings are accepted, but the hyphen helps show it is not related to cooking pots.
Practice
Which sentence uses pot-holing correctly?
Choose one answer.
Names of activities take 'go' with no preposition or article, so 'went pot-holing' is right. 'Went to pot-holing' and 'went on pot-holing' wrongly treat the activity as a place or an event, and 'went a pot-holing' adds an article that uncountable activity nouns do not take.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “pot-holing”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.