tin-pan
Americanadjective
Etymology
Origin of tin-pan
An Americanism dating back to 1840–50
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.
After blastoff, the fictional narrator who has combined the "televisualized" Freud, the tin-pan Trotsky and the Shakespearean Star Trek starts to muse.
From Time Magazine Archive
No flash in tin-pan alley, it was a typical troubadour's success — quick, dramatic, amazingly profitable.
From Time Magazine Archive
Once she had the tin-pan band on, Mrs. Billups went over the alphabet.
From "Out of My Mind" by Sharon M. Draper
He measures his wealth in 'skins,' and when he trades the basis for whatever mental calculations he may make is in the form of lead bullets taken from one tin-pan and transferred to another.
From God's Country—And the Woman by Curwood, James Oliver
A straining voice in the sitting-room and the tin-pan tones of a piano were hushed, and out upon the veranda came several women.
From A Yankee from the West A Novel by Read, Opie Percival
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
