Word.ws English Dictionary

handpan

handpan noun: a type of steelpan that is played with the hands, typically resting on the player's lap.

handpan: a type of steelpan that is played with the hands, typically resting on the player's lap
Image: Toglenn, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

handpan (plural handpans)

  1. A type of steelpan that is played with the hands, typically resting on the player's lap.
    • While I grew up playing brass musical instruments, I gravitated to percussion as a side music hobby as a teen and later began to collect and play African drums and other interesting percussion instruments, such as steel handpans.2016, Jeff Grant, Flow State Runner: Activate a Powerful Inner Coach's Voice, Hillseeker Publishing, →ISBN, pages 53–54

Forms of handpan

pluralhandpans

Origin of handpan

Blend of hand + steelpan, coined as a generic alternative to Hang, late 2000s.

Questions about handpan

What does handpan mean?
Handpan means a type of steelpan that is played with the hands, typically resting on the player's lap.
What part of speech is handpan?
Handpan is a noun.
What is the plural of handpan?
The plural of handpan is handpans.

Words near handpan in the dictionary

  1. handout
  2. handouts
  3. handover
  4. handovers
  5. handpainted
  6. handpan
  7. handpans
  8. handpass
  9. handpassed
  10. handpasses
  11. handpassing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: handpan (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “handpan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/handpan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.