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.
No flash in tin-pan alley, it was a typical troubadour's success — quick, dramatic, amazingly profitable.
From Time Magazine Archive
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
Once she had the tin-pan band on, Mrs. Billups went over the alphabet.
From "Out of My Mind" by Sharon M. Draper
Neither did he ever have to excuse himself in the midst of a discourse, and go outside to stop a tin-pan serenade.
From Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 09 Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers by Hubbard, Elbert
On an aged soap-box behind the house, several inches of grey water in a battered tin-pan indicated a previous effort.
From Dust by Haldeman-Julius, Marcet
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.
