Discrimination and analysis of terms such as “pothole”, “kettle” and “glacial pothole” and suggestions about their usage

In the past decade, many papers or reports related to potholes in North China and controversies on the derivation of potholes have been published in various academic journals and media. However, different authors used different Chinese terms to designate pothole and kettle and describe the same kind of erosion landform; some researchers used the term “pothole” to describe different erosion structures; and some authors even fabricated a new term to replace the word “pothole”. This confusion is not good for researchers to fully understand the basic meaning and usage of the related terms. The authors analyzed the definitions of pothole, kettle, moulin etc., giving a suggestion on the usage and their corresponding Chinese terms. However, the authors share different views for the usage of “pothole”. The first author, who considers that the potholes found in North China so far are of glacial origin and stresses that the original definition of pothole should be observed and thus the pothole origin of fast whirling current or meltwater should be specified. Therefore, the term “pothole” should not be used to describe the hollows of other origins. The second author, who considers that the so-called “potholes” in North China may be formed by differential weathering and suggests that the origin, i.e. derivation by fast whirling water, should be deleted from the original definition of pothole, so that the term “pothole” can be used to describe all the structural hollows only if they are smooth, roughly circular, bowl-shaped or cylindrical hollows formed on the surface of bedrocks, and if needed, the origin description words should be added before the word “pothole”, such as “glacial pothole” and “differential weathering pothole”.