brainpan

plural brainpans · alternative brain-pan · alternative braynepan

1. CanadaUScolloquialThe braincase; the skull.First known use 16th c.

   Many a time but for a Sallet, my braine-pan had bene cleft with a brown Bill.

   1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ix]

   2 more examples

   Yet, whether thwart or flatly it did lyte, / The tempred steele did not into his braynepan byte.

   1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

   Fee, fi, fo, fum, / I smell the blood of a Christian man, / Be he dead, be he living, with my brand, / I’ll dash his brains from his brain-pan.

   1890, Joseph Jacobs, “Childe Rowland”, in English Fairy Tales, page 123

2. CanadaUScolloquialThe brain or mind.First known use 17th c.

   ‘And a hard word it is,’ said Richie, ‘as my brainpan kens to this blessed moment.’

   1822, Walter Scott, The Fortunes of Nigel