Meaning of warming pan | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A covered metal pan attached to a long handle, holding live coals and used to warm a bed.
2. A person put into a situation to hold it until another person can take over.
   dated, figuratively

Equivalents

Examples

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

“[…] 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.”

“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.”

CEFR level