Do these mean the same thing to you?

[Bootsie]

1 hour ago, happysmileylady said:

In Scarlett's defense....I absolutely think there are a whole lot of people who might be saying "pot plant" because they misheard "potted" or even perhaps might have been saying it too fast.

 

I mean, look at how many people are running around saying things like "I could care less" when what they actually mean is "I couldn't care less."   Or "for all intensive purposes" when they mean "for all intents and purposes" etc etc etc.  

So is a plant that is in a garden a "gardened plant" or a "garden plant"?

[Bootsie]

29 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:

I totally call my plants in the garden "garden plants"  Plants in pots in a garden would be called "container gardens"

is that weird?

I wouldn't call plants in pots a "container garden" unless there were a variety of plants in the container; and then I would refer to the entire entity as a "container garden"  I would not refer to one of the plants in the container as a container garden.  

It just doesn't seem any more weird to call a plant that is in a pot a "pot plant" than it does to call a plant in the garden a "garden plant" 

[Scarlett]

7 hours ago, Tanaqui said:

That's not how language works, and you know it.

Well, no I don’t know it.  I get regional differences exist but so do people using the wrong word.  Probably sometimes those misspoken words turn into new phrases but other times like HSL’s examples below people just say it wrong a lot.  
 

i didn’t know about pot vs potted....I would have guessed people just didn’t know the right word....but clearly some areas of this country say it differently. 

2 hours ago, happysmileylady said:

In Scarlett's defense....I absolutely think there are a whole lot of people who might be saying "pot plant" because they misheard "potted" or even perhaps might have been saying it too fast.

 

I mean, look at how many people are running around saying things like "I could care less" when what they actually mean is "I couldn't care less."   Or "for all intensive purposes" when they mean "for all intents and purposes" etc etc etc.  

 

[gardenmom5]

4 hours ago, MEmama said:

This seems to be the more modern word, at least in our area. I’m having a hard time adjusting. 😂

I know "weed" was used in the 60s, as the term was used in 60s TV shows when referring to mj.

[Tanaqui]

Quote

Well, no I don’t know it.  I get regional differences exist but so do people using the wrong word.  Probably sometimes those misspoken words turn into new phrases but other times like HSL’s examples below people just say it wrong a lot.  

Incorrect. Barring momentary disfluencies or severe language-related disabilities, it is axiomatic that native speakers do not make errors in their own native speech. This is the core principle of linguistics, the foundation on which we build everything else.

[Tanaqui]

Quote

I mean, look at how many people are running around saying things like "I could care less" when what they actually mean is "I couldn't care less."   Or "for all intensive purposes" when they mean "for all intents and purposes" etc etc etc.  

If they actually meant the latter, then they would say the latter. They mean the former. That's why they say the former. That's what's correct in their speech variety.

[Scarlett]

3 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

Incorrect. Barring momentary disfluencies or severe language-related disabilities, it is axiomatic that native speakers do not make errors in their own native speech. This is the core principle of linguistics, the foundation on which we build everything else.

Lol you are cracking me up.  You are saying if people say a word or phrase that automatically makes it correct?  Because since they said it that is what they meant?  
 

You seem very serious about this subject and I am just not.  Sorry.  

[KrissiK]

20 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

Incorrect. Barring momentary disfluencies or severe language-related disabilities, it is axiomatic that native speakers do not make errors in their own native speech. This is the core principle of linguistics, the foundation on which we build everything else.

 

20 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

If they actually meant the latter, then they would say the latter. They mean the former. That's why they say the former. That's what's correct in their speech variety.

 

14 minutes ago, Scarlett said:

Lol you are cracking me up.  You are saying if people say a word or phrase that automatically makes it correct?  Because since they said it that is what they meant?  
 

You seem very serious about this subject and I am just not.  Sorry.  

I had to read John McWhorter’s book “The Power of Babel:A Natural History of Language” for a class I took recently. Unfortunately, I didn’t read it as closely as I would have liked,  but it was a pretty fascinating book on the morphology of language. 

[maize]

56 minutes ago, Scarlett said:

Lol you are cracking me up.  You are saying if people say a word or phrase that automatically makes it correct?  Because since they said it that is what they meant?  
 

You seem very serious about this subject and I am just not.  Sorry.  

If a bunch of people within a community use a word or phrase in a particular way, that word or phrase is a natural and therefore correct part of the dialect of that community.

Since scads of native English speakers use the phrase "I could care less" that phrase is clearly correct English usage among those who use it.

[Laura Corin]

2 hours ago, maize said:

If a bunch of people within a community use a word or phrase in a particular way, that word or phrase is a natural and therefore correct part of the dialect of that community.

Since scads of native English speakers use the phrase "I could care less" that phrase is clearly correct English usage among those who use it.

This is the key. If a single Bristolian said, 'I was sat watching the match....' that could be an error. But as most Bristolians say 'sat' rather than 'seated',  or 'sitting', which is more usual speech in the UK, that usage is not  incorrect. 

[Spy Car]

 

3 hours ago, maize said:

If a bunch of people within a community use a word or phrase in a particular way, that word or phrase is a natural and therefore correct part of the dialect of that community.

Since scads of native English speakers use the phrase "I could care less" that phrase is clearly correct English usage among those who use it.

 

28 minutes ago, Laura Corin said:

This is the key. If a single Bristolian said, 'I was sat watching the match....' that could be an error. But as most Bristolians say 'sat' rather than 'seated',  or 'sitting', which is more usual speech in the UK, that usage is not  incorrect. 

Oh dear. A couple "descriptivists."

And heretofore I'd always been rather fond of you two 

Bill (a "prescriptivist")

[Laura Corin]

5 minutes ago, Spy Car said:

 

 

Oh dear. A couple "descriptivists."

And heretofore I'd always been rather fond of you two 

Bill (a "prescriptivist")

I think it was China on top of the UK that made me so. The amount of nasty power that can be wielded by those who speak the 'right' way has moved my support to dialects.  My idiom is more or less standard southern English and my accent used to be RP before my marriage to a Texan, by the way.

[gardenmom5]

4 hours ago, Tanaqui said:

If they actually meant the latter, then they would say the latter. They mean the former. That's why they say the former. That's what's correct in their speech variety.

If that were the case, there wouldn't be so many books published CORRECTING those types of mistakes.  

Based upon people not hearing the correct phrase - either because they misheard or the person saying it said it wrong, etc.  then it get's repeated.

[Ausmumof3]

My guess would be that pot plant was standard usage then became associated with pot so people started saying potted to distinguish to two.  Maybe?  I reckon I’ve seen pot plants mentioned in some old world war 11 era books from England ... now I’m going to look and see what the phrase was 

[Ausmumof3]

https://www.bunnings.com.au/diy-advice/garden/planters/:~:text= 7 best pot plants for your garden,as happy living in pots. A... More
 

You can see here that it’s common commercial use in Aus

[Ausmumof3]

In fact there’s even a business called Mr Pot Plant

http://mrpotplants.com.au

Edited September 21, 2020 by Ausmumof3

[Laura Corin]

This quotation from Busman's Honeymoon, published 1937, manages to combine both the use of the phrase 'pot-plant' and the character's reaction to the correction of his dialect by an over-invested neighbour:

Edited September 21, 2020 by Laura Corin

[MEmama]

5 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

This is the key. If a single Bristolian said, 'I was sat watching the match....' that could be an error. But as most Bristolians say 'sat' rather than 'seated',  or 'sitting', which is more usual speech in the UK, that usage is not  incorrect. 

Interesting.

A song I like by a British singer has a line “...I am stood here today”. Originally I thought maybe “stood” just fit better than “standing” but perhaps it’s a common phrase. Regardless, I like the sound of it.

I admit it’s taken me a long time to embrace words and phrases that sound “wrong” to my ears. Just as I used to be hyper concerned about proper grammar, thankfully I am growing in my appreciation for regional and cultural differences (and in the case of punctuation, my iPad cured me of judgement).

Edited September 21, 2020 by MEmama

[Scarlett]

It is cracking me up that on a classical homeschool board so many people are righteously indignant that anyone dares to say a word or phrase is wrong. 
 

Hopefully my  ears will eventually adjust to the ‘I seen’ that I hear so much all around me.  

[Carrie12345]

17 hours ago, Zebra said:

Me either.   I'm in the Northeast too.

Also, I am grateful to Bill for posting the picture.   We think our neighbor is growing pot in his backyard, but were too scared to google it.🤣

(Totally legal to grow your own pot here, BTW.   I don't care if they grow it, we were just curious because we are nosy!)

We were shocked when it was published that a neighbor was growing a *lot* of pot in his basement.  In pots.  Potted pot plants.

[Tanaqui]

2 hours ago, Scarlett said:

It is cracking me up that on a classical homeschool board so many people are righteously indignant that anyone dares to say a word or phrase is wrong. 
 

Hopefully my  ears will eventually adjust to the ‘I seen’ that I hear so much all around me.  

Yes, how dare we care that you're saying that your ignorant opinion is equal to the actual science of linguistics.

That little opinion is the equivalent of saying "cell theory is just a theory! and so is gravity and the heliocentric model of the solar system!!!"

That's how ignorant it is. Whoever told you otherwise lied to you.

Quote

Lol you are cracking me up.  You are saying if people say a word or phrase that automatically makes it correct?  Because since they said it that is what they meant?  

Yes, that is the foundational principle of linguistic science.

A principle of sociolinguistics, incidentally, is that criticism of other people's speech is a proxy for bigotry - in this case, I'm going to go with "classism". Everybody knows these things, they just like to pretend they don't. (At least, everybody over the age of five, which is when they start to realize that Spanish speakers don't really think in English, knows these things.)

Edited September 21, 2020 by Tanaqui

[Tanaqui]

6 hours ago, gardenmom5 said:

If that were the case, there wouldn't be so many books published CORRECTING those types of mistakes.  

Based upon people not hearing the correct phrase - either because they misheard or the person saying it said it wrong, etc.  then it gets repeated.

 

Those books are ignorant. People who believe them are even more ignorant. You'd be better served investing in a good linguistics textbook rather than continuing to wallow in your own ignorance. Language doesn't exist independent of its speakers. Ergo, whatever a speech community understands and says is correct. Language is consensus reality.

Edit: Ignorant is a bit of a strong word. Accurate, but strong. It's more correct to say that these books attempt - often badly and counterproductively - to emphasize prestigious speech norms. Their claims about what is and isn't "correct" are really about what is and isn't prestigious - the speech of the upper class. (They often manage to badly flub even that small goal, but what do you expect from people so infested with Dunning-Kreuger that they don't even understand that they are conflating prestige and correctness?)

Edited September 21, 2020 by Tanaqui

[Carrie12345]

I’m all for regional, cultural, and generational differences. It can be hard to tell whether something is a difference or an error, but that doesn’t mean error’s don’t exist.

ETA: Otherwise, why am I spending so much time homeschooling grammar and vocabulary???

Edited September 21, 2020 by Carrie12345

[Scarlett]

1 minute ago, Carrie12345 said:

I’m all for regional, cultural, and generational differences. It can be hard to tell whether something is a difference or an error, but that doesn’t mean error’s don’t exist.

ETA: Otherwise, why am I spending so much time homeschooling grammar and vocabulary???

I know,  right?  

[Ausmumof3]

6 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:

I find the idea that a person's language cannot be mistaken to be......a bizzare idea.

My great grandmother consistantly used the word "massacre" to mean "mascara."  She actually meant mascara....she certainly wasn't intending to say that she was putting a massacre on her eyelashes each morning.

My DH couldn't say the word umbilical cord correctly for years.  He would always say "biblical' cord.  No, he never meant that the cord was biblical.  He also still says "PCP pipe" instead of PVC pipe.  No, my DH does not do PCP.

My son is struggling to say the difference between 60 and 16.  He knows the difference between the numbers, but he can't always get his pronounciation correct.  And that pronounciation DOES make a difference.  5 X 12 always equals 60, and not 16.  If he says 16, he has made a mistake.  

 

Saying a person has made a mistake in their speech is really not an insult.  We all make mistakes.  It happens.  It's not really any different than making a typo on the board here.  

An individual can certainly be mistaken. It’s just at a certain point when enough people all make the same mistake for long enough it’s no longer a mistake and becomes an acceptable part of the language.  Having very useful debates about when that should be keeps dictionary makers busy I guess 😆

[Ausmumof3]

3 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

This quotation from Busman's Honeymoon, published 1937, manages to combine both the use of the phrase 'pot-plant' and the character's reaction to the correction of his dialect by an over-invested neighbour:

This makes me so happy 😀... Dorothy Sayers and language usage discussion all in one post 

[Laura Corin]

5 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

An individual can certainly be mistaken. It’s just at a certain point when enough people all make the same mistake for long enough it’s no longer a mistake and becomes an acceptable part of the language.  Having very useful debates about when that should be keeps dictionary makers busy I guess 😆

Yes.  If I said 'gotten' it would be a mistake.  However, it is perfectly correct in many dialects.  At some point in the future, it may become so commonly heard in the UK (via mass media) that it will be part of UK dialect too.

Moving into accent very briefly: my son had speech therapy when we moved to Scotland.  The speech therapist noted that he has a very soft 'r'.  If he had been a Scot, then correcting the 'r' would have been part of his therapy.  As he is not a Scot, and I also have a soft southern-English 'r', it was not incorrect for him.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Laura Corin

[Ausmumof3]

English seems like an awfully funny language for people to be prescriptivist about 😆

[Ausmumof3]

Just now, happysmileylady said:

And to circle back around, if I heard someone say "pot plant" I would totally do a double take and likely be confused.  I would however not *correct* them, other than perhaps as a clarification to be sure I understood what they meant.  I am not some language perfectionist that runs around correcting people to the way I think they should speak.....I just wanna understand what the person is saying lol.  

Lol yes.  A bit like for the brits when the US people talk about getting off their fanny or everyone where Aussies talk about our usual beach foot wear!  However I think in this case pot plant is not a mistake just a regional difference and in fact pot plant might pre date potted plant

[Scarlett]

1 minute ago, happysmileylady said:

And to circle back around, if I heard someone say "pot plant" I would totally do a double take and likely be confused.  I would however not *correct* them, other than perhaps as a clarification to be sure I understood what they meant.  I am not some language perfectionist that runs around correcting people to the way I think they should speak.....I just wanna understand what the person is saying lol.  

Same.  Some things like 'I seen' do jolt my nerves.  But I don't go around correcting anyone anymore since my son is now an adult.  If I heard someone say 'pot plant' knowing they meant a plant in a pot, I would have (before this thread) totally believed they intended to say potted.  This thread has shown me there are places where 'pot plant' is normal usage.  I don't think that makes me a classist.  

[maize]

6 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:

I find the idea that a person's language cannot be mistaken to be......a bizzare idea.

My great grandmother consistantly used the word "massacre" to mean "mascara."  She actually meant mascara....she certainly wasn't intending to say that she was putting a massacre on her eyelashes each morning.

My DH couldn't say the word umbilical cord correctly for years.  He would always say "biblical' cord.  No, he never meant that the cord was biblical.  He also still says "PCP pipe" instead of PVC pipe.  No, my DH does not do PCP.

My son is struggling to say the difference between 60 and 16.  He knows the difference between the numbers, but he can't always get his pronounciation correct.  And that pronounciation DOES make a difference.  5 X 12 always equals 60, and not 16.  If he says 16, he has made a mistake.  

 

Saying a person has made a mistake in their speech is really not an insult.  We all make mistakes.  It happens.  It's not really any different than making a typo on the board here.  

Individuals can misspeak, certainly.

When a construction--word or phrase or grammatical form or what have you--becomes common within a community of speakers it cannot a mistake--it has become part of and proper to the dialect of that community.

Would you consider "goodbye" to be a mistaken form of "God be with you" or is it a proper and correct word in your dialect? 

[maize]

13 minutes ago, Ausmumof3 said:

English seems like an awfully funny language for people to be prescriptivist about 😆

Right?!?🤣😁😂

[maize]

9 minutes ago, Scarlett said:

Same.  Some things like 'I seen' do jolt my nerves.  But I don't go around correcting anyone anymore since my son is now an adult.  If I heard someone say 'pot plant' knowing they meant a plant in a pot, I would have (before this thread) totally believed they intended to say potted.  This thread has shown me there are places where 'pot plant' is normal usage.  I don't think that makes me a classist.  

I can understand "correcting" your son because you were clearly trying to teach him to use a prestige dialect.

Which is fine; my children are also learning a prestige dialect.

I also teach my children that dialects are all inherently equal, I would not want them to mistakenly believe that a dialect in which "I seen" is an ordinary construction is somehow not real and proper and correct language. And if we were surrounded by people using that construction I wouldn't discourage them from using it; at most I would point out the benefits of code-switching as appropriate.

Conjugations in the standard American prestige dialect are only "correct" because that's the way people talk, not because there is some ideal standard rule that they follow.

[Tanaqui]

Quote

at most I would point out the benefits of code-switching as appropriate.

Take it from me, always using an inappropriately formal register is just as bad as always using an inappropriately informal or colloquial register. Nobody seems to take it seriously, but I'm convinced that a difficulty in gauging the correct register and using it properly is a language disability.

[maize]

17 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

Take it from me, always using an inappropriately formal register is just as bad as always using an inappropriately informal or colloquial register. Nobody seems to take it seriously, but I'm convinced that a difficulty in gauging the correct register and using it properly is a language disability.

I had an interesting discussion just recently with my siblings in which we discovered that each of us had a similar experience when moving back to the US after years overseas (most often this transition happened when we enrolled in college).

People would tell us that we spoke strangely and ask us where we were from. Some of it may have been accent, but I think a lot was over-formality and lack of colloquial structure and cadence. Our primary English language models during our years overseas were a) books, b) non-native speakers, who tend to use very textbook-ish English, and c) each other. 

[gardenmom5]

1 hour ago, happysmileylady said:

I find the idea that a person's language cannot be mistaken to be......a bizzare idea.

My great grandmother consistantly used the word "massacre" to mean "mascara."  She actually meant mascara....she certainly wasn't intending to say that she was putting a massacre on her eyelashes each morning.

My DH couldn't say the word umbilical cord correctly for years.  He would always say "biblical' cord.  No, he never meant that the cord was biblical.  He also still says "PCP pipe" instead of PVC pipe.  No, my DH does not do PCP.

My son is struggling to say the difference between 60 and 16.  He knows the difference between the numbers, but he can't always get his pronounciation correct.  And that pronounciation DOES make a difference.  5 X 12 always equals 60, and not 16.  If he says 16, he has made a mistake.  

 

Saying a person has made a mistake in their speech is really not an insult.  We all make mistakes.  It happens.  It's not really any different than making a typo on the board here.  

might want to help him on that one.

I was with a group of women in a park, and we were chatting.  we were talking about how "drugs are good" (in reference to childbirth and depression.) . . . The COP sitting behind us just smiled.  (no one had previously noticed he was there. - it was a section with picnic tables so people could sit down and eat.) - but it could have so easily been misunderstood.

[Bootsie]

54 minutes ago, Scarlett said:

Same.  Some things like 'I seen' do jolt my nerves.  But I don't go around correcting anyone anymore since my son is now an adult.  If I heard someone say 'pot plant' knowing they meant a plant in a pot, I would have (before this thread) totally believed they intended to say potted.  This thread has shown me there are places where 'pot plant' is normal usage.  I don't think that makes me a classist.  

I guess one thing this shows is to be careful about believing that someone intended to say something else because I think they are incorrect--unless I am really sure that they are incorrect.  In this case, there does not seem to be any argument that "pot plant" is incorrect or simply normal usage like "ain't" or "y'all".  In fact, looking at the origins it is likely that "pot plant" was in British usage before "pot" was used in informal American English.  

[gardenmom5]

13 minutes ago, maize said:

I had an interesting discussion just recently with my siblings in which we discovered that each of us had a similar experience when moving back to the US after years overseas (most often this transition happened when we enrolled in college).

People would tell us that we spoke strangely and ask us where we were from. Some of it may have been accent, but I think a lot was over-formality and lack of colloquial structure and cadence. Our primary English language models during our years overseas were a) books, b) non-native speakers, who tend to use very textbook-ish English, and c) each other. 

oh my yes.  when 2dd came back from 18 months in Chile - where she primarily was speaking Spanish, her cadence in English was very different.

[Spy Car]

2 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

English seems like an awfully funny language for people to be prescriptivist about 😆

Fighting words! 

LOL.

Bill (who feels like he's going down with the ship)

[maize]

9 minutes ago, Spy Car said:

Fighting words! 

LOL.

Bill (who feels like he's going down with the ship)

Go read some books written by linguists, you can emerge from your shipwreck as a re-born descriptivist😉

[Spy Car]

15 minutes ago, maize said:

Go read some books written by linguists, you can emerge from your shipwreck as a re-born descriptivist😉

Noooooo. Read Fowler, or sumpin' 

Sound the alarms! Vandals are at the gates.

Fight to the last man (or woman, as the case may be) <--or non-binary.

Bill (who's afraid he's picked the losing side)

 

 

[maize]

11 minutes ago, Spy Car said:

Noooooo. Read Fowler, or sumpin' 

Sound the alarms! Vandals are at the gates.

Fight to the last man (or woman, as the case may be) <--or non-binary.

Bill (who's afraid he's picked the losing side)

 

 

Maybe it was regional variations and linguistic drift that did in the Roman Empire. All those different dialects of Latin moving further and further apart and turning into French and Italian and Spanish and...😁

Perhaps if we resurrect Caesar's Latin and teach everyone to speak it the great empire will arise again?

[gardenmom5]

3 hours ago, Tanaqui said:

 

Those books are ignorant. People who believe them are even more ignorant. You'd be better served investing in a good linguistics textbook rather than continuing to wallow in your own ignorance. Language doesn't exist independent of its speakers. Ergo, whatever a speech community understands and says is correct. Language is consensus reality.

Edit: Ignorant is a bit of a strong word. Accurate, but strong. It's more correct to say that these books attempt - often badly and counterproductively - to emphasize prestigious speech norms. Their claims about what is and isn't "correct" are really about what is and isn't prestigious - the speech of the upper class. (They often manage to badly flub even that small goal, but what do you expect from people so infested with Dunning-Kreuger that they don't even understand that they are conflating prestige and correctness?)

Just a piece of advice - don't go into contract law.  Nuance matters.

I could care less- which people often say in mistake for "I could NOT care less" - means something completely different.

[maize]

37 minutes ago, gardenmom5 said:

Just a piece of advice - don't go into contract law.  Nuance matters.

I could care less- which people often say in mistake for "I could NOT care less" - means something completely different.

Legal terms must be strictly defined. 

Fortunately ordinary folks don't go around speaking legalese; I wouldn't want to live in a society where every sentence had to pass a legal-contract-worthiness test 🤣

In regular ol' everyday speech "I could care less" as a phrase means exactly the same as "I couldn't care less". As evidenced by the fact that you recognize the meaning and intent as well as I do. 

I personally find such linguistic quirks delightful.

[Spy Car]

1 hour ago, maize said:

Maybe it was regional variations and linguistic drift that did in the Roman Empire. All those different dialects of Latin moving further and further apart and turning into French and Italian and Spanish and...😁

Perhaps if we resurrect Caesar's Latin and teach everyone to speak it the great empire will arise again?

Now you're talking!

Forget what I said earlier 

Bill

 

 

 

[Rosie_0801]

I feel better if I treat "I could care less" as short for "I could care less but I'd really have to try." 

[Shellydon]

On 9/20/2020 at 5:16 PM, MEmama said:

Apparently here it is common for people to say “it’s hotting up” instead of “heating up”. I’d never heard the phrase anywhere else.

I love regional language. 🙂 

I've not heard "hotting up."  Neat

[Laura Corin]

6 hours ago, Shellydon said:

I've not heard "hotting up."  Neat

I hear that in the UK too.

[Amy in NH]

On 9/18/2020 at 10:45 PM, klmama said:

I've recently read and heard several people use the expression "pot plant" to mean "a plant in a pot."  It's startling and very confusing to me, because where I grew up "pot plant" always meant a marijuana plant, while a plant in a pot was a "potted plant."  Is the use of "pot plant" to mean "plant in a pot" a regional usage?  If so, where?   

 

 

 

 

A pot plant is marijuana.  A potted plant is a plant in a pot.

Calling a potted plant a pot plant is just lazy or ignorant use of language.

[Bootsie]

12 minutes ago, Amy in NH said:

A pot plant is marijuana.  A potted plant is a plant in a pot.

Calling a potted plant a pot plant is just lazy or ignorant use of language.

I would not consider usage that is in the dictionary lazy or ignorant.  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pot plant; https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/pot-plant;