pantechnicon

== English == === Etymology === From Pantechnicon, a 19th-century firm which owned a building with a Greek-style facade of Doric columns in Motcomb Street, Belgrave Square, London, UK, with a picture gallery, a furniture shop, a shop selling carriages, and a warehouse for storing customers’ furniture and other items. The firm used large horse-drawn vans to collect and deliver their customers' property, which came to be known as Pantechnicon vans. The word was coined by the firm from pan- (“all”) (from Ancient Greek πᾶν (pân), neuter form of πᾶς (pâs, “all, every”)) + τεχνικόν (tekhnikón), neuter singular of τεχνικός (tekhnikós, “technical”). === Pronunciation === (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /pænˈtɛknɪkən/ (General American) IPA(key): /pænˈtɛknək(ə)n/, /-nəˌkɑn/ Hyphenation: pan‧tech‧ni‧con === Noun === pantechnicon (plural pantechnicons or pantechnica) (chiefly UK) A building or place housing shops or stalls where all sorts of (especially exotic) manufactured articles are collected for sale. [from 19th c.] (chiefly UK) Originally pantechnicon van: a van, especially a large moving or removal van. [from 19th c.] 1911, Arnold Bennett, The Card: A Story of Adventure in the Five Towns, London: Methuen Publishing, OCLC 492063506; republished Toronto, Ont.: William Briggs, 1910s, OCLC 225424669, page 69: The pantechnicon was running away. It had perceived the wrath to come and was fleeing. Its guardians had evidently left it imperfectly scotched or braked, and it had got loose. […] [T]he onrush of the pantechnicon constituted a clear crisis. Lower down the gradient of Brougham Street was more dangerous, and it was within the possibilities that people inhabiting the depths of the street might find themselves pitched out of bed by the sharp corner of a pantechnicon that was determined to be a pantechnicon. 1978, Lawrence Durrell, Livia: Or Buried Alive: A Novel, London: Faber and Faber, →ISBN; republished in The Avignon Quintet: Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian, Quinx, London: Faber and Faber, 1992, →ISBN, page 426: In fact, as they later found, the auxiliary vehicle was a very large removers' van – the kind known as a pantechnicon. ==== Synonyms ==== moving truck, moving van removal van ==== Derived terms ==== pantech (Britain) pantech van (Australia) ==== Translations ==== === Further reading === Pantechnicon van on Wikipedia.Wikipedia