Word.ws English Dictionary

pan and scans

pan and scans is the plural of pan and scan.

Meaning of pan and scan

Noun

pan and scan (countable and uncountable, plural pan and scans)

  1. (uncountable) The method or practice of adjusting widescreen film images, especially 2.35:1 or 2.39:1 aspect ratio, so that they can be shown within the proportions of a 1.33:1 or 1.78:1 aspect ratio television screen, by cropping off sides of the original widescreen image, as opposed to letterboxing.
    • Alicia hated the person who had invented pan and scan, since the heightened panning effect aggravated her nausea when watching action movies.
  2. A movie recording employing this technology.
    • In the discount bin by the door sat a pile of pan and scans, mostly comedies, that no one would touch.

See all 5 meanings of pan and scan

Questions about pan and scans

What is pan and scans the plural of?
Pan and scans is the plural of pan and scan.

Words near pan and scans in the dictionary

  1. Pamyats
  2. pan
  3. Pan Am smile
  4. Pan Am smiles
  5. pan and scan
  6. pan and scans
  7. pan bagnat
  8. pan bagnats
  9. Pan Ban
  10. pan bread
  11. pan breads

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pan and scans (page history and authors); pan and scan (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: “pan and scans.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pan_and_scans. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.