Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A pan or hand jig for washing mined ore with water to concentrate the valuable part and eliminate dirt and waste.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Snatching the first items that caught his eye—a broom, a mallet, a wash-pan and a dirty towel—he bolted and ran for about half a mile.

    Mark Twain Ron Powers 2005

  • Snatching the first items that caught his eye—a broom, a mallet, a wash-pan and a dirty towel—he bolted and ran for about half a mile.

    Mark Twain Ron Powers 2005

  • In it he stated that Jim in his excitement had carried the office broom half a mile and had then come back after the wash-pan.

    Mark Twain: A Biography 2003

  • In order to assuage my burning appetite I climbed over a fence, and, picking up a dirty, rusty wash-pan which had been thrown away, I drank a quart of water which I dipped from a horse-trough.

    Fifteen Years in Hell Luther Benson

  • Colonel Howell had few suggestions to make, but while he was in the store, he selected a small leather-cased hatchet and an aluminum wash-pan.

    On the Edge of the Arctic or, An Aeroplane in Snowland

  • In other districts, where clays containing limestone are used, the marl is mixed with water on a wash-pan and the resulting creamy fluid passed through coarse sieves on to a drying-bed.

    Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" Various

  • If necessary, coarse sand is added to the clay in the wash-pan, and such addition is often advisable because the washed clays are generally very fine in grain.

    Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" Various

  • But he swallowed the coffee in his cup, and tossed his eating-implements into the cook's wash-pan.

    Raw Gold A Novel Bertrand W. Sinclair 1926

  • She tried to talk to me one day about Aunt Martha being such a dirty housekeeper; and I wanted to say, 'Every one knows that you have been seen mixing up cakes in the kitchen wash-pan, Mrs. Leander Crawford!'

    Rainbow Valley Lucy Maud 1919

  • She tried to talk to me one day about Aunt Martha being such a dirty housekeeper; and I wanted to say, 'Every one knows that YOU have been seen mixing up cakes in the kitchen wash-pan, Mrs. Leander

    Rainbow Valley 1908

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