The Facts on File Dictionary of Allusions - Green Valley High School

in valleys and mountains, typically by springing
out on them unexpectedly or by making menacing
noises in the undergrowth. Any sensation of fear
welling up for no apparent reason came to be
dubbed panikos, hence the modern word, which
completed its journey to En glish via the French
panique around the early 18th century. Panic spread
quickly through the crowd as news of the executions
passed from one person to another.
Panoptes See argus.
panpipes A musical wind instrument consisting
of various reeds of different lengths bound together.
It was named after the Greek nature god Pan, who
is supposed to have devised the instrument. <strong>The</strong>
legend goes that Pan pursued the nymph Syrinx,
but she escaped from him by hiding in the earth
and being turned into reeds, from which the
thwarted Pan made his set of pipes. Panpipes may
also be known as pipes of Pan or as a syrinx. He
sat on the ground blowing softly into a set of panpipes
and eyeing her quizzically.
Pantagruel See rabelaisian.
pantheon (pantheeon, pantheebn) A group of
distinguished or revered individuals. In ancient
Greece and Rome the Pantheon (from the Greek
meaning “all of the gods”) was a temple dedicated
to the gods collectively. <strong>The</strong> famous pantheon in
Rome was built by the emperor Hadrian in the
second century a.d., incorporating an older structure
built by Agrippa in 27 b.c., and became a
Christian church in 609. In due course the term
came to be applied to all the gods collectively
of any religion and thus to any group of outstanding
individuals, especially to national heroes and
memorials built in their honor. “How will the
demi- gods in your Pantheon—I mean those legendary
persons you call saints—intercede for
you after this?” (Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure,
1895).
pantisocracy (pantisokrasee) An ideal, communistic
society. <strong>The</strong> word, derived from the Greek
“all of equal power,” was devised around 1794 by
the En glish poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–
1834) as the name of the perfect society he and
fellow poet Robert Southey and others planned to
found on the banks of the Susquehannah River in
New En gland. Lack of funds meant that the envisaged
community never came into being. Idealists in
the party envisaged a pantisocracy where decisions were
made directly by the electorate.
Panza, Sancho See don quixote.
Paolo and Francesca
panzer (panzer) A tank, especially one belonging
to a highly mobile tactical unit. <strong>The</strong> original
panzers were the tanks of the German armored
divisions—the Panzerdivisionen—that spearheaded
the Nazi invasion of western Eu rope and Rus sia
during World War II. <strong>The</strong> German word panzer
means simply “armor.” Although primarily associated
with the tanks of Nazi Germany, the term is
occasionally applied to tanks generally. We told the
Rus sians in no uncertain terms to get their panzers off
our lawn.
Paolo and Francesca (powlo, francheskb) Archetype
of a pair of tragic lovers. <strong>The</strong> story of Paolo
and Francesca, which featured in Dante’s Inferno,
described how Francesca da Rimini married
Giovanni Malatesta but then fell in love with
Giovanni’s brother Paolo, with the result that the
lovers were both executed in 1289. Like Paolo and
Francesca, everything went wrong when she fell for his
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