Word.ws English Dictionary

pannum

pannum noun: bread; food.

Noun

pannum (uncountable)

  1. (UK, obsolete, thieves' cant) Bread; food.
    • Here's Pannum and Lap, and good Poplars of Yarrum, / To fill up the Crib, and to comfort the Quarron.1641–42, Richard Brome, A Joviall Crew, or, The Merry Beggars, published 1652, act 2
    • As far as injun, pannum, and cheese, and a drop of heavy goes, you are perfectly welcome.1844, Charles Selby, London by Night, act 1, scene 2

Forms of pannum

alternative formpanem
alternative formpanum
alternative formpannam
alternative formpennam

Origin of pannum

Compare Norwegian Rodi cant pannom/panum, meaning loaf; Swedish Månsing cant pan (“loaf”), and old jargon Dutch paen (“bread”). Having in mind the fact that Rodi and Månsing tend to have many Latin borrowings, it is likely that English pannum is also derived from Latin pānem, the accusative of pānis (“bread, loaf”). But it also may be through Italian pane (“bread”), in the light of that the English thieves' cant is known to have some Italian borrowings as well.

Words formed from pannum

  • pannum-bound
  • pannum-fence
  • pannum-struck

Questions about pannum

What does pannum mean?
Pannum means bread; food.
What part of speech is pannum?
Pannum is a noun.

Words near pannum in the dictionary

  1. pannose
  2. pannosely
  3. Pannotia
  4. Pannu
  5. Pannullo
  6. pannum
  7. pannus
  8. pannuscorium
  9. pannuses
  10. panny
  11. Pannychis

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pannum (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.

Last updated:

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