panhandle

plural panhandles

1. The handle of a pan.
2. UScartographyAn area within a nation or subnational division that appears to stick out or project when viewed on a map; an especially elongated salient.
3. aeronauticsThe handle that activates an ejector seat.

   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.

   2007, Roger Brooks, Handley Page Victor, volume 2

present singular third person panhandles · participle present panhandling · participle past panhandled · past panhandled

1. USintransitiveTo beg for money, especially with a container in hand for receiving loose change, especially on the street, and particularly, as a homeless or vagrant person.

   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.

   2014 May 30, Will Butler, “The Mark of Cane”, in The New York Times Magazine

2. figurativelytransitiveuncommonTo elicit; to attempt to obtain or provoke a certain response or answer.

1. A city, the county seat of Carson County, Texas, United States.

1. The Alaskan Panhandle.