pot boiler

See also: potboiler

English

Alternative forms

Noun

pot boiler (plural pot boilers)

  1. (mildly derogatory) A creative work of low quality (book, art, etc), produced merely to earn a living or for profit, as opposed to serious creative expression.
    • [1864 August 27, Saturday Review:
      Arists and novelists of a certain stamp joke about ‘pot-boilers’, the name facetiously given to hasty, worthless pictures and books […]]
    • 1925, Florence Scovel Shinn, The Game of Life and how to play it:
      No man is a success in business unless he loves his work. The picture the artist paints for love is his greatest work. The pot-boiler is always something to live down.
    • 2018 February 18, David Ehrlich, “‘Eva’ Review: Not Even Isabelle Huppert Playing an Irritated Prostitute Can Save this Limp Melodrama”, in IndieWire‎:
      A limp, sudsy adaptation of James Hadley Chase’s 1945 novel “Eve” (a potboiler that Joseph Losey once spun into a Jeanne Moreau vehicle of the same name), “Eva” begins with an engaging sequence that instantly sets the tone by subverting its own beauty.
  2. (archaeology) A stone used to transfer heat from a fire into a vessel of water, so as to heat the contents.

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