panhandle

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ˈpænˌhæn.dəl/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Hyphenation: Pan‧han‧dle

From pan +‎ handle.

panhandle (plural panhandles)

1. The handle of a pan.
2. (cartography, US) On a map, any arm or projection suggestive of the handle of a pan; an especially elongate salient.

   The three counties that form the Oklahoma panhandle were originally part of the Cimarron Strip.

   The very wide Texas panhandle butts up, at its north, against the Oklahoma panhandle.

   The Florida panhandle is the area west, along the Gulf coast, of the Florida Peninsula.

   Part of Fairfield County, Connecticut constitutes a panhandle, extending into Bronx County, New York.

   The Alaska Panhandle is that portion of the state to the south of Yakutat.

   Madawaska County, in New Brunswick, Canada, protruding between Quebec and the US state of Maine, is also known as the New Brunswick Panhandle.

   One of the few examples of a panhandle not formed by the administrative borders of geopolitical entities, the Okavango Panhandle is the narrow, elongate stretch of the Okavango watercourse that precedes the wide, splaying Okavango Delta.

3. (aviation) The handle that activates an ejector seat.
   • 2007, Roger Brooks, Handley Page Victor, volume 2:

     The Captain Keith Handscomb was the occupant of that ejector seat and the only survivor; his narrow escape was by just being able to reach the seat panhandle with his third and fourth fingers of his left hand.

• (cartography): salient

Probable back-formation from panhandler.

panhandle (third-person singular simple present panhandles, present participle panhandling, simple past and past participle panhandled)

1. (US) To beg for money, especially with a container in hand for receiving loose change, especially on the street, and particularly, as a bum.
   • 2014 May 30, Will Butler, “The Mark of Cane”, in The New York Times Magazine‎:

     I had a white cane, but I never used it. Once, alone and lost in downtown Washington, I unfolded it, immediately sweating as I felt hundreds of eyes shift onto me. A man who was panhandling grabbed me and showed me the way home.