pan1
/pan
/noun
1A metal container used for cooking food in: heat the olive oil in a heavy pan...
- Fabric softener sheets are claimed to clean baked on foods from cooking pots and pans.
- A number of cooking utensils, pans and cauldrons were also made of iron, with the consequence that these things lasted much longer and couldn't be burnt.
- To get started, coat a grill pan with the cooking spray and rub both sides of the steaks with the seasoning of your choice.
Synonyms
saucepan, frying pan, pot, casserole, wok, skillet, bain-marie, fish kettle, pressure cooker, poacher, chafing dish;
container, cooking utensil;
Indian karahi
1.1An amount of something contained in a pan: a pan of hot water...
- In high school I used to make a whole pan of rice krispie treats and then eat the entire thing by myself in less than a half hour.
- When it snowed she used to let us bring in a pan of clean snow and then we'd put Log Cabin Maple Syrup on it and eat it with a spoon.
- I even peeled a pan of potatoes for the tea, which was appreciated, although it was remarked that some of them were a funny shape.
2A bowl or other container, in particular:It stopped within about fifteen minutes of my turning off the water and the boiler, having filled up various pans, plastic containers and mixing bowls....
- Pass the soup through a sieve into a clean pan or bowl, rubbing with the back of a ladle.
- Perhaps you have the perfect system for washing up - glasses first, pans last, one thing in the bowl at a time.
2.1A bowl fitted at either end of a pair of scales: she sifted flour on to the wide brass pan of the scales...
- We might imagine a scale with two balancing pans.
- This is an interesting problem, since all we have is a bathroom scale and the small pan balance the kids have been using to weigh pennies and toy cars.
- Setting aside 13 coins, you divide the remaining 26 equally between the two pans of the scale.
2.2British The bowl of a toilet: peroxide is what they put down the lavatory to disinfect the pan...
- In the shower, you could sit on the toilet pan and wash your hair at the same time.
- I think the toilet pan has survived, but it was a close run thing.
- They pinned me down and attacked me, poking their fingers in my eyes, and forced my head into the toilet pan and flushed.
2.3A large container used in a technical or manufacturing process for subjecting a material to heat or a mechanical or chemical process.The resulting pans are rough-tuned before heating and fine-tuned after the firing process....
- He walked drunkenly over the cabinet on the wall and picked up a pan used for grouping chemicals used in various experiments.
- In this method brine is boiled and agitated in huge tanks called vacuum pans.
2.4A steel drum.‘Cello pans’ are played in sets of three or four; triple cello pans are tuned in diminished chords, and four-pan cellos in augmented chords....
- To manufacture these pans, hundreds of thousands of hammer strikes were executed upon these drums.
- In a steelband, the melodies are played on a tenor pan, which can play a complete low pitch scale.
2.5A shallow bowl in which gold is separated from gravel and mud by agitation and washing: he washed the gold-free surface gravel out over the rim of the pan...
- His grandfather sifted gold from pans during Alaska's gold rush of 1896.
- Spring came, and they found a broad valley where the gold showed like yellow butter across the bottom of the washing pan.
- Mountain bikes and hiking boots have replaced picks and pans in this Gold Country town.
2.6A part of the lock that held the priming in old types of gun: prime the pan, pour the powder down the barrel, then ram in the cartridge’s paper and ball...
- These locks featured a round pan and a flat lock plate suitable for engraving.
- Raising the weapon to his shoulder, he checks the pan, lock, and serpentine, wiping away any interfering sand and mud.
- The powder charge and the ball and patch had to be rammed separately down the tight-fitting barrel and the pan primed with powder.
3A hard stratum of compacted soil: heavy spikes can be useful in breaking a surface pan in grassland...
- This should be done when the soil is as dry as possible, and aims to break through any pre-existing hard pans and to open up the subsoil to facilitate rapid and deep penetration of the vine roots.
- ‘We know what the strata of the soil is, but localised areas can hit hard pans,’ he said.
- On their lee sides some pans have clay dunes or lunettes composed of sandy, silty, clayey, and salty materials blown out from the pan floor.
4A hollow in the ground in which water may collect or in which a deposit of salt remains after water has evaporated.The roads are good, running either side of potato fields and regular cells / pans of water evaporating to produce salt....
- The salt refiners extract high grade salt from approximately 3000 hectares of evaporative pans south of the lagoon.
- The open pan of the valley had no terrors for us in daylight.
Synonyms
hollow, pit, basin, depression, dip, indentation, crater, cavity, concavity
5US informal A person’s face.
verb (pans, panning, panned) [with object]
1 informal Criticize severely: the movie was panned by the critics...
- Critics who panned this movie for being too clever for its own good or too remote in its postmodern sophistry haven't quite figured out that intellectual rigour doesn't automatically negate emotional resonance.
- But after the movie was panned by the American critics and failed at the box-office, he began denouncing it publicly.
- Yet despite suffering a critical panning it has emerged as a massive hit, raking in $32.2 million at the US box office last weekend.
Synonyms
criticize, censure, attack, lambaste, condemn, find fault with, give a bad press to, flay, savage, shoot down, bring under fire
informal knock, take to pieces, take/pull apart, crucify, hammer, slam, bash, give something a battering
roast, skewer, maul, throw brickbats at
British informal slate, rubbish, slag off, monster
North American informal trash, pummel
Australian/New Zealand informal bag
2Wash gravel in a pan to separate out (gold): the old-timers panned gold [no object]: prospectors panned for gold in the Yukon...
- He worked on ranches, sold newspapers, and panned for gold to pay for his education at the Boston Latin School.
- Teachers, parents and children dressed in cowboy gear, panned for gold, and played some very unusual games.
- There were three other sightings that this witness has been involved in and he gave us some details of these previous sightings, as well as how he panned for gold near his property.
Synonyms
sift for, search for, look for
2.1 [no object] (pan out) (Of gravel) yield gold.They can keep the gold they pan out as souvenirs of modest value, plus get a certificate, a medal and perhaps a bag of local cookies or a bottle of schnapps as a trophy....
- Not all the prospects pan out, but occasionally an owner will strike gold.
- Feel the rush as you pan out a real nugget of gold.
Phrases
go down the pan
Phrasal verbs
pan out
Derivatives
panful
/ noun (plural panfuls) ...- In summer I take home armfuls of wild flowers, filling the house with the scent of Lomond, and in Autumn I collect panfuls of fresh Chanterelle mushrooms and fry them up in olive oil for breakfast.
- You could also put a large panful of boiling salted water on to simmer gently so that it will come to the boil quickly at half-time.
- The flowers are also used to flavour cooked fruit and jam, which is achieved by stirring the panful with a spray of flowers until the flavour is judged strong enough.
pan-like
- The invention relates to a supporting arrangement for panlike or traylike articles, in which the structure takes the form of vertical columns arranged in laterally spaced pairs.
- The production is carried out in a pan-like reactor.
Origin
Old English panne, of West Germanic origin; related to Dutch pan, German Pfanne, perhaps based on Latin patina 'dish'.
The word pan in the sense of something you cook with is a common West Germanic word, which may have been an early borrowing from Latin patina ‘dish’. The same Latin word is the source, via Italian, of patina (early 18th century), perhaps because of the green film that appears on old copper dishes. The verb to pan out (mid 19th century) comes from the use of a shallow pan to get gold from river sand. See also panic, panorama
Rhymes
pan2
/pan/verb (pans, panning, panned) [with object and adverbial of direction]
1Swing (a video or film camera) in a horizontal or vertical plane, typically to give a panoramic effect or follow a subject: he was panning the camera over everything in sight...
- With a wide view, you can usually pan the camera very slowly to follow the action, just like people do when moving their heads.
- We are moving into some traffic as I pan the camera through the passenger-side window.
- Unsurprisingly enough, rpan pans the camera from left to right, rtilt tilts it up and down, rfocus refocuses it, rzoom zooms in or out, and riris sets the iris to suit the light.
1.1 [no object, with adverbial of direction] (Of a camera) be swung in a horizontal or vertical plane: the camera panned to the dead dictator...
- We then see the interior of the prison, with the camera panning across the room - priests, monks and soldiers milling about, some talking together in the foreground.
- There is no animation at all, simply a superzoomed camera panning slowly over the static illustration while a narrator reads the page.
- So, for example, while a camera is still panning around her, she hovers in the air, then suddenly unleashes a rapid fury of kicks and punches.
Synonyms
swing (round), sweep, track, move, turn, circle
noun
A panning movement: that slow pan over London...
- Thus the tense, often jarring interplay between rapid pans or other movement, and stationary close-ups.
- Try to avoid very fast panning or very slow boring pans.
- But there are also a certain number of slow lateral and circular pans, as well as more rapid views from a car moving through various villages.
Phrases
pan and scan
Origin
Early 20th century: abbreviation of panorama.
pan3
/pɑːn/noun
Variant spelling of paan.
Pan4
/pan/Greek Mythology
A god of flocks and herds, typically represented with the horns, ears, and legs of a goat on a man’s body. His sudden appearance was supposed to cause terror similar to that of a frightened and stampeding herd, and the word panic is derived from his name.
Origin
Probably originally in the sense 'the feeder' (i.e. herdsman), although the name was regularly associated with Greek pas or pan (= 'all'), giving rise to his identification as a god of nature or the universe.