Online Encyclopedia
Make a correction
Your email address will not appear on the site. Note, comments may take some time to be approved.
Back to article:
PAN (common in various forms to many Teutonic languages, cf. Ger. Pfanne; it is generally taken to be an early adaptation in a shortened form of Lat. patina, shallow bowl or dish, from patere, to lie open)
Your email:
Article name:
Article content:
PAN (common in various forms to many Teutonic languages, cf. Ger. Pfanne; it is generally taken to be an early adaptation in a shortened form of Lat. patina, shallow bowl or dish, from patere, to lie open), a term applied to various sorts of open, flat, shallow vessels. Its application has been greatly extended by analogy, e.g. to the upper part of the skull; to variously shaped objects capable of retaining substances, such as that part of the lock in early firearms which held the priming (whence the expression " flash in the pan," for a premature and futile effort); or the circular metal dish in which gold is separated from gravel, earth, &c., by shaking or washing (whence the phrase " to pan out," to obtain a good result). Small ice-floes are also called " pans," and the name is given to a hard substratum of soil which acts as a floor to the surface soil and is usually impervious to water. For pan " or " pane " in architecture see HALF-