Meanings
- Southern USdatedespeciallyThe shrill, high-pitched noise of a guinea fowl.
[…]a few guinea hens pecking for seeds or worms and calling out their idiot incessant potrack, potrack, potrack.
2019 May 20, Terrell Greene, Terry’s Run: An American Life 1923 ..., Xlibris, →ISBN2 more examples
Here and there cattle were grazing, guinea fowls were calling potrack in tones which not even the magic of distance could render musical[…]
1898, Bradford Torrey, “Virginia”, in A World of Green Hills: Observations of Nature and Human Nature in the Blue Ridge, Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, page 186My grandmother got me some guinea eggs once, to put under one of those hens. Their "potrack, potrack, potrack" had all the neighbors up in arms after a while
2003 November 29, DittyDu...@webtv.net, “Thanksgiving over, now TRUTH!”, in alt.fifty-plus.friends
present singular third person potracks · participle present potracking · participle past potracked · past potracked
- archaicchiefly African-American VernacularTo make such a shrill, high-pitched noise.
Cocks crowed, guineas potracked, calves and goats bleated. A strain of music sang out above the confusion of sounds[…]
1932, Julia Mood Peterkin, chapter V, in Bright Skin: A Novel, University of Georgia Press, published 1998, →ISBN, page 432 more examples
"Dem guineas potracked en waked me up, Son," whispered Neptune. "Now I aims to git whut 's been sneakin' off wid my fowls."
1920, Marie Conway Oernler, “IV: The Soul of Black Folks”, in The Purple Heights, New York: Century Co.Come de daybreak you hear de guinea fowls start potracking down at de edge of de woods lot, and den de roosters all start up 'round de barn and de ducks finally wake up and jine in.
1941, Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, volume 13, Washington, DC: Library of Congress, →OCLC, page 334
Origin
Onomatopoeic.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
potrack. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/potrack
“potrack.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/potrack. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “potrack,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/potrack.
Source: potrack on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.