slop jar
- noun
- Archaic
- During the 19th century, a slop jar was a common household item used to dispose of dirty water.
Examples
-
All you fit to do is clean her slop jar and cook her food.
-
The slop jar, out of the shadow and made snow-white in the moonlight, appeared to stand guard over him like a small personal angel.
Fiction book (1998) -
Moustique, whose hands were both engaged in balancing the priest's slop jar, could not slap it.
Fiction book (2000) -
If he returned belatedly with the slop jar, blinking in the full light of day, the priest did not reprove his tardiness but was pleased that the boy seemed to have finally gotten beyond his sense of shame.
Fiction book (2000) -
Before indoor plumbing was common, families often kept a slop jar in the bedroom for waste water.
-
In the absence of modern toilets, many homes relied on a slop jar to collect waste from chamber pots.
Synonyms
A round container used for cooking or holding plants
A wide glass or clay container for storing food
A thick clay pot used to store food or drink
A wide, round container with sloping sides for holding water or food
A wide, open bowl used for holding water or other liquids
A bowl or basin for cleaning hands and face
A large bucket for collecting dirty water from a sink or chamber pot
A bowl for holding kitchen scraps to feed animals like pigs
A pot used for cleaning clothes or other household things
A shallow open container like a bowl for holding or serving food
A pot holding about two litres used as an old measure for liquids or dry food
A small jar that holds liquids like oil or water
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is directly compositional: 'slop' denotes dirty household liquid and 'jar' denotes a container, so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer it is a container for slops. This is a standard noun + noun naming pattern (common across languages) and, despite being somewhat archaic, its meaning is predictable from the constituents.
Etymology
Slop jar comes from old homes before indoor plumbing. The word slop meant dirty water or leftover food and jar was the container kept by the bed to hold 'waste water' from a washbasin or chamber pot, so the name came to mean a large container for that waste.