"Potatoe" is an archaic spelling of the word potato. The Oxford English Dictionary lists potatoe as a variant form, the most recent usage cited being from 1880: "She found the parson in his garden..making a potatoe pie for the winter." However, in modern English it is considered a misspelling, since although the English plural, potatoes, is spelled with an "e", the singular is not, and no dictionary considers potatoe to be an acceptable modern spelling.

• Vice President of the United States Dan Quayle was notoriously associated with this misspelling in a June 15, 1992, incident that was, albeit briefly, national news in the United States as well as a source of entertainment for the tabloid newspapers in the UK. Quayle went to a photo op at Munoz Rivera School in Trenton, New Jersey, where he was to officiate a spelling bee by drawing flash cards and asking students to write the words on the blackboard. 12-year-old William Figueroa wrote "potato", but the flash card Quayle was working from was misspelled so he prompted the student to add an "e"

• For the June 25, 1992, airing of The Simpsons episode "Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish," Bart Simpson's opening blackboard punishment was hastily changed to read, "It's potato, not potatoe".

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