potager means A kitchen garden; sometimes used attributively. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 93 out of 100.
potager is pronounced /ˈpɒtaʒeɪ/.
Why “potager” is a great word
A kitchen garden, especially one laid out in a decorative, often geometric, pattern. Its name stems from Middle English *potager*, from Middle French *potager*, derived from *potage*, the thick soup or stew it was originally meant to supply. Unlike a purely utilitarian 'vegetable garden' or the archaic 'porringer' (a small soup bowl), a potager is where cultivation meets composition. It is the regimented rows of ruby chard beside silvery artichokes, the fragrant geometry of thyme and lavender hedging a square of lettuce, and the scarlet runner beans climbing a precisely placed obelisk—a quiet testament to the human insistence on finding order and beauty even in our most fundamental sustenance.
Etymology
From Middle English potager, from Middle French potager, from potage. The pronunciation is sometimes altered to imitate the pronunciation of French potager.
noun
- A kitchen garden; sometimes used attributively.“while he could not get into it until he obtained the keys from Bechet the notary, he had a picnic or two in the dilapidated garden and the herb potager, now run hopelessly to seed and weed.”
- A porringer.“An INDIAN DISH or Potager. Made alſo of the Barque of a Tree, with the Sides and Rim ſewed together after the manner of Twiggen-Work.”