pan

pronunciation

How to pronounce pan in British English: UK [pæn] word uk audio image

How to pronounce pan in American English: US [pæn] word us audio image

Noun:

cooking utensil consisting of a wide metal vessel
shallow container made of metal
Verb:

make a sweeping movement
wash dirt in a pan to separate out the precious minerals
express a totally negative opinion of

Word Origin

pan: pan: [OE] Pan is a general West Germanic word, with relatives in German (pfanne) and Dutch (pan), and also, by borrowing, in Swedish (panna) and Danish (pande). It may have been borrowed into Germanic from Latin patina ‘dish’ (source of English paten [13] and patina [18]), which itself went back to Greek patánē ‘plate, dish’.The verbal use pan out ‘turn out, succeed’ is an allusion to the getting of a result when ‘panning’ for gold – washing gold-bearing gravel, silt, etc in a shallow pan to separate out the metal. (Pan ‘move a camera’ [20], incidentally, is a different word altogether. It is an abbreviation of panorama.)=> paten, patina; panorama

pan (n.): Old English panne, earlier ponne (Mercian) "pan," from Proto-Germanic *panna "pan" (cognates: Old Norse panna, Old Frisian panne, Middle Dutch panne, Dutch pan, Old Low German panna, Old High German phanna, German pfanne), probably an early borrowing (4c. or 5c.) from Vulgar Latin *patna, from Latin patina "shallow pan, dish, stewpan," from Greek patane "plate, dish," from PIE *pet-ano-, from root *pete- "to spread" (see pace (n.)). Irish panna probably is from English, and Lithuanian pana is from German. Used of pan-shaped parts of mechanical apparatus from c. 1590; hence flash in the pan, a figurative use from early firearms, where a pan held the priming (and the gunpowder might "flash," but no shot ensue). To go out of the (frying) pan into the fire is first found in Spenser (1596).

pan (v.2): "follow with a camera," 1913 shortening of panoramic in panoramic camera (1878). Meaning "to swing from one object to another in a scene" is from 1931. Related: Panned; panning.

Pan: Arcadian shepherd god with upper body of a man and horns and lower part like a goat, late 14c., a god of the woods and fields, from Latin, from Greek Pan. Klein says perhaps cognate with Sanskrit pusan, a Vedic god, guardian and multiplier of cattle and other human possessions, literally "nourisher." Similarity to pan "all" (see pan-) led to his being regarded as a personification of nature. Pan-pipe, upon which he supposedly played, is attested from 1820.

pan (v.1): "to wash gravel or sand in a pan in search of gold," 1839, from pan (n.); thus to pan out "turn out, succeed" (1868) is a figurative use of this (literal sense from 1849). The meaning "criticize severely" is from 1911, probably from the notion in contemporary slang expressions such as on the pan "under reprimand or criticism" (1923). Related: Panned; panning.