pan: Meaning and Definition of

pan

1. a broad, shallow container of metal, usually having sides flaring outward toward the top, used in various forms for frying, baking, washing, etc.
2. any similar receptacle or part, as the scales of a balance.
3. the amount a pan holds or can hold; panful: a pan of shelled peas.
4. any of various open or closed containers used in industrial or mechanical processes.
5. a container in which silver ores are ground and amalgamated.
6. a container in which gold or other heavy, valuable metals are separated from gravel or other substances by agitation with water.
7. a drifting piece of flat, thin ice, as formed on a shore or bay.
8. a natural depression in the ground, as one containing water, mud, or mineral salts.
9. a similar depression made artificially, as for evaporating salt water to make salt.
10. (in old guns) the depressed part of the lock, holding the priming.
11. an unfavorable review, critique, or appraisal: The show got one rave and three pans.
12. the face.

1. to criticize severely, as in a review of a play.
2. to wash (gravel, sand, etc.) in a pan to separate gold or other heavy valuable metal.
3. to cook (oysters, clams, etc.) in a pan.

1. to wash gravel, sand, etc., in a pan in seeking gold or the like.
2. to yield gold or the like, as gravel washed in a pan.
3. to turn out, esp. successfully: The couple's reconciliation just didn't pan out.

pan

1. the leaf of the betel.
2. a substance, esp. betel nut or a betel-nut mixture, used for chewing.

pan

1. to photograph or televise while rotating a camera on its vertical or horizontal axis in order to keep a moving person or object in view or allow the film to record a panorama: to pan from one end of the playing field to the other during the opening of the football game.
2. (of a camera) to be moved or manipulated in such a manner: The cameras panned occasionally during the scene.

1. to move (a camera) in such a manner: to pan the camera across the scene.
2. to photograph or televise (a scene, moving character, etc.) by panning the camera.

1. the act of panning a camera.
2. Also calledthe filmed shot resulting from this.

pan

1. a major vertical division of a wall.
2. a nogged panel of half-timber construction.

pan

1. panguingue.

pan

1. Pan.

Pan

1. the ancient Greek god of forests, pastures, flocks, and shepherds, represented with the head, chest, and arms of a man and the legs and sometimes the horns and ears of a goat.

Pan

1. an international distress signal used by shore stations to inform a ship, aircraft, etc., of something vital to its safety or that of one of its passengers.

pan-

1. a combining form meaning “all,” occurring originally in loanwords from Greek (panacea; panoply), but now used freely as a general formative (panleukopenia; panorama; pantelegraph; pantheism; pantonality), and esp. in terms, formed at will, implying the union of all branches of a group (Pan-Christian; Panhellenic; Pan-Slavism). The hyphen and the second capital tend with longer use to be lost, unless they are retained in order to set off clearly the component parts.

Pan.

1. Panama.