[pant] 
| 1. | to breathe hard and quickly, as after exertion. |
| 2. | to gasp, as for air. |
| 3. | to long with breathless or intense eagerness; yearn: to pant for revenge. |
| 4. | to throb or heave violently or rapidly; palpitate. |
| 5. | to emit steam or the like in loud puffs. |
| 6. | Nautical. (of the bow or stern of a ship) to work with the shock of contact with a succession of waves. Compare work (def. 24). |
| 7. | to breathe or utter gaspingly. |
| 8. | the act of panting. |
| 9. | a short, quick, labored effort at breathing; gasp. |
| 10. | a puff, as of an engine. |
| 11. | a throb or heave, as of the breast. |
| var. of panto- before a vowel. |
| a combining form meaning “all,” occurring originally in loanwords from Greek (panacea; panoply), but now used freely as a general formative (panleukopenia; panorama; pantelegraph; pantheism; pantonality), and esp. in terms, formed at will, implying the union of all branches of a group (Pan-Christian; Panhellenic; Pan-Slavism). The hyphen and the second capital tend with longer use to be lost, unless they are retained in order to set off clearly the component parts. |
| a combining form synonymous with pan-: pantology. |
| pant 1 (pānt) v. pant·ed, pant·ing, pants v. intr.
To utter hurriedly or breathlessly: I panted my congratulations to the winner of the race. n.
[Middle English panten, perhaps alteration of Old French pantaisier, from Vulgar Latin *pantasiāre, from Greek phantasioun, to form images, from phantasiā, appearance; see fantasy.] pant'ing·ly adv. |
| pant 2 (pānt) n.
[Short for pantaloon.] Word History: One would not expect a word for a modern article of clothing to come ultimately from the name of a 4th-century Roman Catholic saint, but that is the case with the word pants. It can be traced back to Pantaleon, the patron saint of Venice. He became so closely associated with the inhabitants of that city that the Venetians were popularly known as Pantaloni. Consequently, among the commedia dell'arte's stock characters the representative Venetian (a stereotypically wealthy but miserly merchant) was called Pantalone, or Pantalon in French. In the mid-17th century the French came to identify him with one particular style of trousers, a style which became known as pantaloons in English. Pantaloons was later applied to another style that came into fashion in the late 18th century, tight-fitting garments that had begun to replace knee breeches. After that pantaloons was used to refer to trousers in general. The abbreviation of pantaloons to pants met with some resistance at first; it was considered vulgar and, as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, "a word not made for gentlemen, but 'gents.'" First found in the writings of Edgar Allan Poe in 1840, pants has replaced the "gentleman's word" in English and has lost all obvious connection to Saint Pantaleon. |
pan- pref.
All: panagglutinins.
General; whole: panimmunity.
pant (pānt)
v. pant·ed, pant·ing, pants
To breathe rapidly and shallowly.