pothook

noun

1. An S-shaped iron hook used to suspend a cooking pot over a fire.
2. A crooked stroke in writing; a scrawl.

   “An indescribable character of faded gentility that attached to the house I sought, and made it unlike all the other houses in the street—though they were all built on one monotonous pattern, and looked like the early copies of a blundering boy who was learning to make houses, and had not yet got out of his cramped brick-and-mortar pothooks—reminded me still more of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber.”