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Synonyms

frying pan

American  
Also fry-pan,

noun

  • frying pans
    plural
  1. a shallow, long-handled pan in which food is fried.


idioms

  1. out of the frying pan into the fire, free of one predicament but immediately in a worse one.

frying pan British  

noun

  1. a long-handled shallow pan used for frying

  2. from a bad situation to a worse one

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms


Etymology

Origin of frying pan

1350–1400; Middle English fryinge panne


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Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

A frying pan was recovered from a bin on St George's Road.

From BBC ● Jun. 18, 2026

Weather that swings from deep freeze to frying pan.

From Barron's ● Apr. 14, 2026

Yet the country may be launching out of the frying pan and into the fire.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 13, 2026

Inside Dorothy’s Kansan house, a once-shadowed frying pan on the wall now dangles front and center, as does a digitally added “Home Sweet Home” needlepoint nailed to the threshold.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2025

So Father was extremely well-bred and he had to laugh yesterday because for the first time in his fifty-five years, he scraped out the frying pan at the table.

From "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank

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