Green’s Dictionary of Slang

pan n.1

[SE pan, as something round or a container]

1. the female genital area.

Show quotations
[UK] ‘Song’ in Playford Pills to Purge Melancholy I 235: Man is for the Woman made, / And the Woman made for Man / As the Sceptre to be sway’d / As for Night’s the Serenade, / As for Pudding is the Pan.
[UK] ‘The Tinker’ in Secret Songster 43: Oh, says she, I’ve been married for twenty years or more, / And such a scouring in my pan I ne’er had before.
[US]‘The Chambermaid’ in Whip and Satirist of NY 9 Apr. n.p.: Such is the wantonness of man, / That many stay an extra week / to trry the virtues of her pan.
[US] ‘Jargon of the Und.’ in DN V 458: Pan, A woman’s body, specifically the genitals.
[US]Roosevelt Sykes ‘Bread Pan (Just My Size)’ 🎵 She makes my bread rise late hours in the night, / I put my bread right in her pan / and I shoves it clean out of sight.
[US]Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).

2. (US) the mouth; often as shut pan!

Show quotations
[US]T. Haliburton Clockmaker III 82: No, sir, the grave don’t part ’em, nor death shut his pan nother.
[US]R. Lardner Big Town 193: Before I could open my pan she says, ‘I’ll write and tell her we can’t come’.
[US]A.J. Barr Let Tomorrow Come 41: The one with the cheaters lets his pan fall open so far you could shove an apple in it.
[US]J. Weidman I Can Get It For You Wholesale 67: But the disappointment was too great for them to keep their pans shut.

3. the head.

Show quotations
[US]S. Ford Torchy, Private Sec. 28: ‘I fear Mr. Briscoe thinks unfavorably of it.’ ‘Then he’s fruity in the pan.’.
[US]F. Bill ‘Crimes in Southern Indiana’ in Crimes in Southern Indiana [ebook] ‘[O]ne of the Salvadorans can take ye out behind the barn, put a nine to your pan’.

4. the human face.

Show quotations
[Aus]E. Dyson ‘Mickie Mollynoo’ in ‘Hello, Soldier!’ 45: I couldn’t fight yeh, blarst yeh, if yeh dinted in me pan.
[US]J. Lait Broadway Melody 73: I couldn’t keep my pan toward the front on account o’ trying to keep cases on you.
[US]R. Sale ‘A Nose for News’ in Goulart (1967) 197: The rest of the staff [...] kept their pans a perfect blank.
[US]S. Longstreet Decade 317: The readers are up with his pan in every crossroad post office.
[US]W. Burroughs letter 2 May in Harris (1993) 92: Dave and I have parted company, and I hope I never see his junky pan again.
[Aus]D. Niland Big Smoke 168: He saw a woman of forty who looked like a hag of sixty. God, he thought, what a pan.
[SA]L.F. Freed Crime in S. Afr. 105: When he ‘chats a guy with a boot in the pan’, it means that he has kicked him in the face.
[US]E. Weiner Drop Dead, My Lovely (2005) 14: She hit me with a poker pan.

5. (US gay) the anus.

Show quotations
[US]B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 19: the rectal opening, anus [...] pan (‘He wanted to deep fry some sausage in your pan’).

In exclamations

shut pan! (v.) (also shut your pan!)

be quiet! shut up!

Show quotations
[US] Mass. Spy 2 Jan. n.p.: Instead of saying grace decently, as he used to do, he called out attention – handle arms – and for grace after dinner – now shut pans.
[US]J.K. Paulding Westward Ho! I 121: Shut pan, and sing dumb.
[UK]Marryat Peter Simple (1911) 159: Shut your pan, or by the tail of Jonah’s whale, I’ll swear you’re a Spaniard.
[US]Congressional Globe 7 July Appendix 123: No one rose. No one broke silence. Shut pan seemed to be the word of command on the left side of this chamber.
[US]Manchester Spy (NH) 21 Sept. n.p.: ‘Shet yer pan, you lo-eared venegar bar’l’ .
[US]Putnam’s Mag. , vi. (Sept.) 246: ‘Now jest stop, Axy,’ said he; ‘jest shet pan now I tell ye ; and don’t open your face again.’.
[US]A.J. Barr Let Tomorrow Come 239: ‘Go to hell and shut your pan or I’ll bang you,’ the vic growls.

SE in slang uses

In compounds

panhead (n.) [the resemblance of their badge to a pan-lid]

(W.I.) a district constable.

Show quotations
[WI]cited in Cassidy & LePage Dict. Jam. Eng. (1980).

In phrases