pantechnicon

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pantechnicon

/pænˈtɛknɪkən/ UK
/pænˈtɛknək(ə)n/ US
/-nəˌkɑn/ US

Where it comes from

From Pantechnicon, a 19th-century firm which owned a building with a Greek-style facade of Doric columns in Motcomb Street, Belgrave Square, London, UK, with a picture gallery, a furniture shop, a shop selling carriages, and a warehouse for storing customers’ furniture and other items. The firm used large horse-drawn vans to collect and deliver their customers' property, which came to be known as Pantechnicon vans.

The word was coined by the firm from pan- (“all”) (from Ancient Greek πᾶν (pân), neuter form of πᾶς (pâs, “all, every”)) + τεχνικόν (tekhnikón), neuter singular of τεχνικός (tekhnikós, “technical”).

noun pantechnicons · pantechnica

UK A building or place housing shops or stalls where all sorts of (especially exotic) manufactured articles are collected for sale. It is plain, that such writers do not rise to the very idea of a University. They consider it a sort of bazaar, or pantechnicon, in which wares of all kinds are heaped together for sale in stalls independent of each other; and that, to save the purchasers the trouble of running about from shop to sh
UK Originally pantechnicon van: a van, especially a large moving or removal van. For we do not employ battleships as convoys, nor even as pantechnica conveying landing parties.

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MLA

"pantechnicon." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/pantechnicon. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

pantechnicon. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/pantechnicon

Chicago

"pantechnicon." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/pantechnicon.

BibTeX

@misc{pantechnicon_2026,
  title = {pantechnicon},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/pantechnicon},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}