Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A small room or closet, usually off a kitchen, where food, tableware, linens, and similar items are stored.
  • noun A small room used for the preparation of cold foods.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The office of a pantler.
  • noun An apartment or closet in which provisions are kept, or where plate and knives, etc., are cleaned.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun An apartment or closet in which bread and other provisions are kept.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A small room, closet, or cabinet usually located in or near the kitchen, dedicated to food storage and/or storing kitchenware. Since the pantry is not typically temperature-controlled (unlike a refrigerator or root cellar), the foods stored in a pantry are usually shelf-stable staples such as grains, flours, and preserved foods.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a small storeroom for storing foods or wines

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English pantrie, from Old French paneterie, bread-closet, from panetier, pantry servant, from pan, bread, from Latin pānis; see pā- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French paneterie, related to Latin panis ("bread").

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Examples

Comments

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  • Sounds to me like it should be a place to store pants. Or something to do with pants anyway. Putting them on or something.

    June 14, 2008

  • Good point. A place for panting as you put on your pants.

    June 14, 2008

  • I thought 'twas where you went to test the roadholding properties of your next new motor.

    June 14, 2008

  • Sounds like a place you could try some of those uber expensive skillets before investing in one.

    June 14, 2008

  • Hmm. I once lived in an apartment that was so small that I did store pants in the pantry. (There were no closets.) However, I could not fit in the pantry with the pants, so I had to pant elsewhere when donning the pants.

    June 16, 2008

  • Wow. Does donning pants really have its own verb, "to pant"? *thinks about pants*

    June 17, 2008

  • Not that I know of. I was thinking of "to pant" as in "to breathe heavily." But one could say one was panted if pants were on respective legs, I suppose.

    June 17, 2008

  • Also, one could get pantsed if panting profusely.

    June 17, 2008

  • Much as I prefer reading the rest of this page, I'm going to spoil it now:

    "Associated with the buttery in the Great Hall complex. Not sure what its function was as differentiated from the former. Pantry actually means 'bread room' (pan French equals bread). The lower end of a great hall, opposite the lord's dais at the upper end, almost always had three doors: buttery, pantry, and passage to kitchen." (britcastles.com)

    August 27, 2008

  • I have a feeling how Borat would pronounce the Latin word for bread (see Etymologies above).

    May 15, 2021