potizō

This verb is the "causing" partner of the ordinary verb for drinking. Where πίνω is what a thirsty person does, this word is what someone else does for them: hand them a cup, water the ox, soak the field. One verb covers all of it, because in each case the point is the same, making sure another takes in the liquid it needs.

In the Gospels it is mostly a word of care. Giving even a cup of cold water to one of the "little ones," or drink to a stranger, is singled out by Jesus as the kind of small mercy God notices (Matthew 10:42; Matthew 25:35). The same verb also describes the bleak moment at the cross when a bystander lifts sour wine to Jesus' lips.

Paul stretches the farming sense into a picture of ministry: he planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth (1 Corinthians 3:6). The watering is real work, yet it is not what makes anything grow. From there the word turns fully figurative. New believers are "given milk to drink" as spiritual infants, all are "made to drink of one Spirit," and in its darkest use Babylon has "made all the nations drink" the wine of God's wrath. It is the plain verb of giving a drink, used to picture how God nourishes, and how judgment is poured out.