What does "pan" mean?

Additional senses

1. 2.Etym: [Perh. a different word.] A leaf of gold or silver.
2. 3.To join or fit together; to unite. [Obs.] Halliwell.
3. 4.The betel leaf; also, the masticatory made of the betel leaf, etc. See .
4. 5.The god of shepherds, guardian of bees, and patron of fishing and hunting. He is usually represented as having the head and trunk of a man, with the legs, horns, and tail of a goat, and as playing on the shepherd's pipe, which he is said to have invented.
5. 6.A shallow, open dish or vessel, usually of metal, employed for many domestic uses, as for setting milk for cream, for frying or baking food, etc.; also employed for various uses in manufacturing. "A bowl or a pan." Chaucer.
6. 7.(Manuf.) A closed vessel for boiling or evaporating. See Vacuum pan, under Vacuum.
7. 8.The part of a flintlock which holds the priming.
8. 9.The skull, considered as a vessel containing the brain; the upper part of the head; the brainpan; the cranium. Chaucer.
9. 10.(C A recess, or bed, for the leaf of a hinge.
10. 11.The hard stratum of earth that lies below the soil. See Hard pan, under Hard.
11. 12.A natural basin, containing salt or fresh water, or mud. Flash in the pan. See under Flash. -- To savor of the pan, to suggest the process of cooking or burning; in a theological sense, to be heretical. Ridley. Southey.
12. 13.To separate, as gold, from dirt or sand, by washing in a kind of pan. [U. S.] 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. Gen. W. T. Sherman.
13. 14.(Mining) To yield gold in, or as in, the process of panning; -- usually with out; as, the gravel panned out richly.
14. 15.To turn out (profitably or unprofitably); to result; to develop; as, the investigation, or the speculation, panned out poorly. [Slang, U. S.]