warming pan

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English

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Noun

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warming pan (plural warming pans)

  1. A covered metal pan attached to a long handle, holding live coals and used to warm a bed.
    Synonym: bedwarmer
  2. (figurative, dated) A person put into a situation to hold it until another person can take over.
    Synonym: locum tenens
    • 1820, The Steeliad, a Poem, in Three Cantos, page 35:
      [] who speedily installed his Son [] into the office of Collector of Taxes, as a warming-pan, or locum tenens, till his Father-in-Law's twelvemonths of mock-heroic dignity had expired—or he should think proper to resume the Collectorship.
    • 1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, “Housewarming”, in Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, [], published 1848, →OCLC, page 364:
      We used to call him in my parliamentary time W. P. Adams, in consequence of his being Warming Pan for a young fellow who was in his minority.

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