marmite

Senso

1. pot, cooking pot, marmite
2. meal prepared in a cooking pot
3. (slang) (heavy) shell
4. (slang) prostitute, especially one past the first youth, the "flesh pot" of the souteneur

Genere

♀️ Femminile

Pronunciato come (IPA)

/maʁ.mit/

Etimologia

In Middle French (attested 1388) used in the sense of an earthen or metal cooking-pot; later (17th century) also of bombs or grenades from their resemblance to iron cooking-pots.
Earlier, the noun Old French marmite meant "hypocrite" (attested 1223); the semantic development is explained as the cooking-pot being covered and not revealing its interior (thus being "hypocritical", as compared to e.g. a cooking-pan or a plate).
The etymology of marmite "hypocrite" is explained as a compound of marmotter (“to mutter”) (from an onomatopoeic base mar- "murmur") and mite (“cat”) (an obsolete word for "cat", probably also onomatopoeic, i.e. imitative of meowing, extant only in the compound chattemite), and thus describing a person being evasive by "murmuring" or "meowing" instead of speaking plainly.