Potholes vs Potholes

[owd git]

A caver is in an offside position if he is in the opposing team's cave and is also "nearer to his opponents' goal or digging place than both the bucket and the second-last opponent." Being "nearer to an opponent's goal or dig" meant that "any part of his head, body or feet is nearer to his opponents' goal line than both the bucket and the second-last opponent".

Regardless of position, there is no offside offence if a potholer receives the dig directly from a corner kick, goal kick, or throw-in. However, an offside offence may occur if a potholer receives the digging bucket directly from either a direct free kick or an indirect free kick

Just for Johnnyrocketboots

Am I allowed to chuckle too?
O.G.

 

[martinr]

A marmite is a large cooking pot, which these hole are supposedly similar to. The name seems to have been expropriated by a British 'food' :....

The image on the front of the British Marmite jar shows a "marmite",  a French term for a large, covered earthenware or metal cooking pot. British Marmite was originally supplied in earthenware pots, but since the 1920s has been sold in distinctively shaped glass jars.

 

[cap n chris]

Any else got a half-decent reasoned and sourced/referenced explanation of where the term pothole, as referring to caves, originated then?

 

[mikem]

Coz the pothole in the riverbed (e.g. Fell Beck) became big enough to swallow the whole flow (& cavers). Road potholes form in the same way as your explanation above - the hard skin of tarmac is worn away & the looser material below is removed more easily...

Mike

 

[andys]

I think its more complicated than that. The term "Pot" has been used as part of the names of very obvious features in the Dales landscape for centuries - eg Alum Pot as described by Hutton in his "A Tour to the Caves in the environs of Ingleborough and Settle" of 1780 (2nd edition available online here: http://es-scripts.lancs.ac.uk/atourtothecaves/atourtothecaves.pdf and note that he calls it variously "Allan", "Alan" and "Alumn Pot"). And that suffix has come to be applied to more recent, and somewhat less obvious, discoveries too. But its not the only suffix used, "Hole" ,"Cave" and "Gill/Ghyll" all appear - as they still do today. So perhaps a "pot-holer" is someone who goes down these "pots" or "holes"?

 

[mikem]

Or simpler, it has a hole in the top like a pot...

Mike