Definition of "pan"

She yanks the pan out from under me & it spills all over the bed. Then she's got to change the sheets! Unreal.

1977-1980, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure

"He's a foreign-looking guy with thinnish black hair and a meaty sort of pan."

1946, George Johnston, Skyscrapers in the Mist, page 121

Dave and I have parted company, and I hope I never see his junky pan again.

1993, William S. Burroughs, edited by Oliver Harris, The Letters of William S. Burroughs, 1945–1959, New York: Penguin, page 92

This was the kind of operator who would tell you to be there at nine sharp and if you weren't sitting quietly with a pleased smile on your pan when he floated in two hours later on a double Gibson, he would have a paroxysm of outraged executive ability […].

1953, Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye, Penguin, published 2010, page 103

[…] he pull’d the Trigger, but Providence being pleas’d to preserve me for some other Purpose, the Cock snapp’d, and miss’d Fire. Whether the Prime was wet in the Pan, or by what other Miracle it was I escap’d his Fury, I cannot say […]

1743, Robert Drury, The Pleasant, and Surprizing Adventures of Mr. Robert Drury, during his Fifteen Years Captivity on the Island of Madagascar‎, London, pages 95–96

And he […] glared on the cold pistols that hung before him—ready for anything. And he took down one with a snatch and weighed it in his hand, and fell to thinking again; and, as he did, kept opening and shutting the pan with a snap, […]

1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard

Unto the devil rough and black of hue / Give I thy body and my pan also."

14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales: The Friar's Tale

The steel band transforms the people who play in it and dance to it, and fosters links between them. […] He learned to play the pan and filled in for absent members.

2009, Pnina Werbner, Black and Ethnic Leaderships, page 122

We […] witnessed the process of cleaning up and panning out, which is the last process of separating the pure gold from the fine dirt and black sand.

1875, William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs

Matt Damon, who compared the advent of virtual money to the development of aviation and spaceflight in a critically panned but widely seen Crypto.com ad last year, did not respond to requests to weigh in.

2022 May 17, Tiffany Hsu, “All Those Celebrities Pushing Crypto Are Not So Vocal Now”, in The New York Times‎

Later today in Finsbury Park, the cameras would spend hours panning across 35,000 festivalgoers in search of pickpockets, drunken brawlers, and other assorted agents of petty mischief.

2018 February, Robert Draper, “They are Watching You—and Everything Else on the Planet: Technology and Our Increasing Demand for Security have Put Us All under Surveillance. Is Privacy Becoming just a Memory?”, in National Geographic‎, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, archived from the original on 14 June 2018

For instance, in the film Dances with Wolves, a pan of an uninhabited landscape contrasts the gruesome beginning footage that depicts the carnage of war.

2013, Monle Lee, Carla Johnson, Principles of Advertising: A Global Perspective, page 197

Pan it down—press an article into its proper place

31 May 1884, Leeds Mercury

The plants can either be sold individually in the 3 inch pots as Valentine favors , or several may be panned together in larger pots

1963, Grower Talks

When she publicly acknowledged that she is pan, it educated citizens near and far on what that sexuality meant and the importance of being proud of who you are.

2012 December 28, Anna Waugh, “Texas got a pansexual legislator”, in Dallas Voice, volume 29, number 33, page 9

Another anonymous pansexual disclosed, "Sometimes I feel really left out because I'm pan. […] "

2013, Alejandra Rodriguez, "Isn't That Bisexual?", Outwrite, Fall 2013, page 7

A similar experience is shared by individuals who identify their sexuality as pan, bi or queer.

2013, Megan Hertner, "Understanding Gender and Sexuality", Grapevine (Huron University College), December 2013, page 19