footpan

English

Etymology

From foot +‎ pan.

Noun

footpan (plural footpans)

1. A pan used to bathe the feet.
   • 1867, Frederick J[ames] Furnivall, Education in Early England. Some Notes Used as Forewords to a Collection of Treatises on “Manners & Meals in Olden Time” for the Early English Text Society, […], London: N[icholas] Trübner & Co., […], pages lxii–lxiii:

     The directions for personal cleanliness must have been much needed when one considers the small stock of linen and clothes that men not rich must have had; and if we may judge from a passage in Edward the Fourth’s Liber Niger, even the King himself did not use his footpan every Saturday night, and would not have been the worse for an occasional tubbing:⁠—[…]

   • 1871, Philip Smith, The Ancient History of the East. From the Earliest Times to the Conquest by Alexander the Great. […] (The Student’s Ancient History), London: John Murray, […]; James Walton, […], page 152:

     He was a native of Siouph, in the Saïte nome, and belonged to a house of no high distinction. Finding that this lessened his consideration with his subjects, he caused (says Herodotus) a golden footpan to be made into the image of a god, and when the Egyptians flocked to worship the image, he called them to an assembly, and, by comparing its change of condition to his own, won the respect which was due, at all events, to his cleverness.

   • 1907, George Tancred, Rulewater and Its People: An Account of the Valley of the Rule and Its Inhabitants, page 358:

     Men and women were not so luxurious in their ideas of comfort as they are now. Bathrooms were not in existence. Footpans were in general use to bathe the feet.

   • 1998, Julie L. Horan, Sitting Pretty: An Uninhibited History of the Toilet, Robson Books, →ISBN, page 8:

     During his travels in Egypt, Herodotus reported that an Egyptian king, Amasis, had owned a gold footpan used for washing his feet as well as for collecting vomit and urine.