Where does the term "a flash in the pan"come from?
Answers:
a misfire on a flintlock gun, the power in the pan flashes but the main charge doesnt fire the bullet.
I believe it came from the gold panning days when you thought you hit it big, but it was just a flash in the pan and not much more.
I've heard two explanations, both of which sound convincing
One is that it comes from the days of matchlock, wheellock and flintlock guns - if the small charge of powder held in the 'pan' of the firing mechanism went off when the match or spark hit it, but did not ignite the main charge, you got a small bang and flash, but the weapon did not actually fire - just a flash in the pan!
the other is that it comes from prospecting for gold - using a pan or flat dish to sift through gold-bearing sands and gravel. If you saw a bright mineral that didn't turn out to be gold, it was just a flash in the pan!
I think it derives from the early gold prospectors who would literally see a flash of light as they panned for gold, but who would often fail to find the nuggets on closer inspection.
Flintlock weapons. The "pan" was the part of the gun which the flint sparked upon, causing a loaded weapon to discharge. This happened very quickly, so anything that happened and was over very quickly was so described
A third one you'd know if you cook.
sometimes when you fry something greasy and it spills over
you get a quick flash! things get quite interesting after that if you don't put the lid on quickly.
I believe it comes from the early days of silver refining. In the Roman times, lead contained a silver to a small degree. To get the silver, the lead was heated in a furnace and air blown over it to create lead oxide. The "soot" was collected and reduced back into lead and what was eventually left in the "pan" (or rather a crucible) would be silver. This would occur as a shiny metal rather than the dull grey colour of lead and hence the term. I may not have got this 100% accurate, but this is where I understood the term to come from
There was a feller that was panning for gold while his wife was hunting for bears. The man had saw a flash in the pan , screemed EUREEEEEKA! the wife turned from the bear to see him as the Flintlock **** wheeled foward, luckily it was only a flash in the pan.
The man never found the gold of the ground, the lady taught the bears to sing and dance, they all moved to Easther Island and carved funny stone faces that will perplex even the greatest of scientific minds.
All of this is because of a flash in the pan.
It certainly comes from a gun, as some respondents have said. I saw a demonstration at an English Heritage festival of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century weaponry, and they explained the meaning behind the phrase. Guns, such as those used during the American War of Independence, were liable to misfiring, and instead only giving off a flash, and this is where the term comes from. (As explained by other respondents)
I've only ever come across the flintlock rifle explanation.
However, I'll just expand the topic, with this mildly interesting digression. After the end of the Second World War, Sir Oswald Mosley (who previously had led the blackshirted British Union of Fascists in the 1930s) set up a new right-wing, antisemitic, racist party called the Union Movement. It had, as its symbol, a lightning flash within a circle. His many political opponents, both in reference to the symbol, and to the hope that the new party would quickly disappear, called the Union Movement the "flash in the pan". You didn't know that, now did you?
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