English

Noun

pannikin ‎(plural pannikins)

1. A cup or other vessel used for drinking.
   • 1852, Ellen Clacy (diarist), cited in Susan Lawrence, "Households on Australian goldfields" in Penelope M. Allison (ed.), The Archaeology of Household Activities, London: Routledge, 1999,

     ‘a block of wood forms a table, and this is the only furniture; many dispense with that. The bedding, which is laid on the ground, serves to sit upon. Tin plates and pannikins… compose the tea service.’

   • 1938, George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

     It is all bound up in my mind with the winter cold, the ragged uniforms of militiamen, the oval Spanish faces, the morse-like tapping of machine-guns, the smells of urine and rotting bread, the tinny taste of bean-stews wolfed hurriedly out of unclean pannikins.

   • 1950, Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Family Moskat, translated by A.H. Gross, New York: Knopf, Part V, Chapter 1, p. 258,

     The peasants and their wives came to the doors of their cottages. Some brought out pannikins of water to the fleeing Jews; others laughed and jeered.

   • 2007, Toyin Falola and Amanda Warnock (eds), Encyclopedia of the Middle Passage, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, p. 131,

     Water was seriously rationed, and each slave was given half a pint of water served in a pannikin.

2. The contents of such a vessel.

Translations

See also

• cup
• mug

References

• The Oxford English Dictionary