warming pan

plural warming pans

1. A covered metal pan attached to a long handle, holding live coals and used to warm a bed.

   Good Bardolfe / Put thy noſe betweene the ſheetes, and do the office of a warming pan.

   1599 (date written), [William Shakespeare], The Cronicle History of Henry the Fift, […] (First Quarto), London: […] Thomas Creede, for Tho[mas] Millington, and Iohn Busby […], published 1600, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i], line 81

   Synonyms: bedwarmer

2. datedfigurativelyA person put into a situation to hold it until another person can take over.

   We used to call him in my parliamentary time W. P. Adams, in consequence of his being Warming Pan for a young fellow who was in his minority.

   1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, “Housewarming”, in Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC, page 364

   1 more example

   […] who speedily installed his Son […] into the office of Collector of Taxes, as a warming-pan, or locum tenens, till his Father-in-Law's twelvemonths of mock-heroic dignity had expired—or he should think proper to resume the Collectorship.

   1820, The Steeliad, a Poem, in Three Cantos, page 35

   Synonyms: locum tenens