potleg, noun

Origin:
See quotation 1913.
obs.
Pieces of cast iron used as bullets.
[1888 D.C.F. Moodie Hist. of Battles & Adventures II. 27They used powder horns in those days, and long junks of lead or the legs of iron pots, and thus took a long time to load.]
1895 Chambers’s Jrnl (U.K.) XII. 738Ball or shot they rarely use, but prefer a handful of broken cast-iron potleg, which at close quarters makes a ghastly wound.
1900 Longman’s Mag. (U.K.) Dec. 143When the sergeant raised his officer, ragged potleg was whirring everywhere.
1911 P. Gibbon Margaret Harding 63The ‘pot-leg,’ the Kafir bullets hammered out of cold iron, sang in the air like flutes, and made a wound when they struck that a man could put his fist into.
1913 C. Pettman Africanderisms 383Potlegs, The pots used by the natives for cooking purposes are of cast iron, and stand upon three long thin legs. It was no uncommon thing in the earlier Kaffir wars for the natives to break these legs into pieces of a suitable size to use in their muzzle-loaders as bullets.
[1990 Weekly Mail 24 Aug. 1The others use ‘qwashas’, home-made guns made from pipes. They use the legs from the three-legged (potjiekos) pots for bullets.]
Pieces of cast iron used as bullets.
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obsolete or obsolescent
potjiekos, nounn.pou, nounn.
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