marmite

Meaning

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

pot

earthenware cooking pot

cooking vessel

water jar

iron pot

metal pot

water kettel

en terre cuite

rice cooker

chaudrière

Frequency

Gender

♀️ Feminine

Pronounced as (IPA)

/maʁ.mit/

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.