Sliced Pan
A pre-sliced loaf of pan bread - the standard everyday white loaf in Irish bread aisles. 'Pan' here is the rectangular tin shape of the bread, not the cooking vessel. Almost always heard as the full phrase 'a sliced pan'.
Etymology
The 'pan' is older than the slicing. 'Pan' for a particular shape of tin loaf is documented from at least the eighteenth century - Spanish 'pan' (bread) is the most-cited origin, though the trail is contested. Pre-sliced loaves arrived in Irish shops in the mid-twentieth century and the compound 'sliced pan' settled almost immediately. Jack Lynch referenced sliced-pan prices in Dáil debates in 1959, marking its arrival as a standard kitchen item.
In a sentence
"Pick up a sliced pan and a pound of butter on your way home."
Historical notes
Sliced pan is the unmarked default loaf in Irish English: when someone says 'get a sliced pan', no further detail is needed. The construction names a specific flour type and a specific bread profile - Ireland and the UK are reportedly the only countries using this particular soft-pan loaf type, which gives the Irish use a distinctive cultural anchor. The derived expression 'the best thing since sliced pan' is the Hiberno-English variant of the standard English 'best thing since sliced bread', with the 'pan' marking it as Irish.
Sources
- Oxford English Dictionary, entry pan n. (bread sense). · dictionary
- Dáil Éireann debates, 1959 (Jack Lynch on bread prices). · historical