Too poor to have-find a pot to piss in

A slang metaphor that originated in the US, and is used to describe someone who is extremely poor or penniless. It dates from the 1930s when most people had flushing toilets. If a person did not have a flushing toilet and was 'too poor to afford a pot to piss in', they would , of course, simply urinate wherever, in an alleyway, in the open etc. It has nothing to do with selling urine to treat leather or manufacture explosives, which are spurious etymologies often encountered on the internet. See also piss-poor