1. A long-handled covered pan of metal (usually of brass) to contain live coals, etc., formerly in common use for warming beds.
1573. Baret, Alv., W 64. A warmyng pan, thermoclinium.
c. 1590. Marlowe, Jew of Malta, 1745. A fellow … with … a Dagger with a hilt like a warming-pan.
1669. Pepys, Diary, Jan. Presented from Captain Beckford with a noble silver warming-pan, which I am doubtful whether to take or no.
1710. Hilman, Tusser Rediv., May (1744), 62. The tinkling after them with a Warming-Pan, Frying-Pan, or Kettle, is of good Use to let the Neighbours know you have a Swarm [of Bees] in the Air.
1840. Dickens, Old C. Shop, xiv. A nosegay resembling in shape and dimensions a full-sized warming-pan with the handle cut short off.
fig. 1626. Breton, Fantasticks (Grosart), 9/2. I thus conclude, I hold it [August] the worlds welfare, and the earths Warming-pan.
1762. Gentl. Mag., XXXII. 137/2. For wedlock is the warming-pan, That best can warm the bed.
2. Hist. With allusion to the story that James II.’s son, afterwards called the Old Pretender, was a supposititious child introduced into the Queen’s bed in a warming-pan. Also attrib.
1689. Full Answ. Depos. Birth Pr. Wales, 13. Do you think it [the child] was conveyed there in a Warming-pan, or otherwise?
1689. Muses Farew. Popery, 141. A Warming pan Plot, worse than Celliers Meal-Tub.
1716. Collect. State Songs, Poems, etc., 64. Let those Rebels, if they can, Make us forget the Warming Pan, Which first convey’d that pretty Man Into the Chamber Royal.
1818. Scott, Rob Roy, ix. Our immortal deliverer from papists and pretenders, and wooden shoes and warming pans.
3. slang. a. A large old-fashioned watch. Cf. TURNIP sb. 3 b. b. A female bed-fellow. Scotch warming-pan: a chambermaid who lay in the bed a while to warm it for the intending occupant.
1668. Davenant, Man’s the Master, II. 25. None but a cold Bed-fellow would have two Warming-Pans.
1678. Ray, Prov. (ed. 2), 83. A Scotch warming-pan, i.e. a wench. The story is well known of the Gentleman travelling in Scotland, who desiring to have his bed warmed, the servant-maid doffs her clothes and lays her self down in it for a while.
a. 1700. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, Warming-pan, an old fashion’d large Watch. A Scotch Warming-pan, a She-bed-fellow.
c. A person who temporarily holds a place or employment until the intended occupant is ready to take it.
1846. Eclectic Rev., June, 662. A locum tenens (ecclesiasticè, a warming-pan) was wanted for a Yorkshire living.
1847. Disraeli, Tancred, II. i. Hungerford is not a warming-pan;… he never was originally; and if he had been, he has been member for the county too long to be so considered now.
1883. D. C. Murray, Hearts, xiv. (1885), 117. I only serve the place of what in Parliament is called a warming-pan.
attrib. 1875. Daily News, 2 June, 2/2. The Act … was simply employed for conserving livings for the use of the children of the patron, and was popularly known as the ‘warming-pan’ Act.
