potbelly
Americannoun
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a protruding or distended belly
-
a person having such a belly
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a small bulbous stove in which wood or coal is burned
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of potbelly
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
I grew up in eastern Kentucky and attended grade school in a four-room schoolhouse without indoor plumbing that had a potbelly stove for heat in the winter.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2026
Talia Greis, from Australia, won Macro, with an abstract portrait of a potbelly seahorse in the murky waters near Bare Island, Sydney.
From BBC ● Feb. 19, 2024
The loft, which rented for $40 a month, had no electricity — power was wired in from a light fixture in the hall — and was heated with a potbelly stove.
From New York Times ● Mar. 28, 2023
“We were crowded into one 20-by-20-foot room. There were ten of us all together! We had a single light bulb and a potbelly stove. No running water!”
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 27, 2022
McDonough, as tall as the others but with a potbelly, was, like Perlstein and Proctor, in his late twenties or early thirties.
From "Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing" by Ted Conover
In Palomar, there are heroes with potbellies and wrinkles and pockmarked faces.
From New York Times ● Nov. 19, 2022
He stared out at a room full of gray hair, bald spots, potbellies, crow’s feet, laugh lines, liver spots, spider veins.
From The Guardian ● May 1, 2019
Suits idealize and triangulate the male torso, smoothing spare tires and hiding potbellies; dresses nip and tuck and create curves where there were none.
From New York Times ● Jan. 6, 2016
The first potbellies arrived in North America in 1985; their U.S. population, according to one estimate, may be as high as 6,000, and breeders at times are hard-pressed to keep up with demand.
From Time Magazine Archive
Hence potbellies, which, according to Tunney, lead to moral collapse.
From Time Magazine Archive
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
