[ti:Words and Their Stories Pan] [ar:Warren Scheer] [al:WORDS AND THEIR STORIES] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]Now, the VOA Special English program WORDS AND THEIR STORIES. [00:25.06]Today's word, pan, takes us back to the days [00:27.42]of the gold rush in California. [00:32.15]On January twenty-fourth, eighteen forty-eight, [00:35.94]a man named James Wilson Marshall [00:39.11]discovered gold in the territory of California. [00:44.71]The news spread quickly. Thousands rushed west. [00:48.13]They traveled on foot, by horseback [00:52.01]and by boat to reach the gold fields. [00:56.94]By eighteen forty-nine, the great gold rush was on. [01:01.23]Towns and cities grew overnight. [01:05.27]Throughout the territory ¨C in the mountains, [01:07.45]along the streams and rivers ¨C [01:10.50]thousands of people searched for gold. [01:15.04]They had food to eat and blankets to cover them. [01:17.90]They also had mules to ride, [01:22.44]and picks and pans to search for gold. [01:27.98]Some found areas of mountain rock thick with gold. [01:32.58]These men got rich. But such areas were few [01:35.94]and quickly claimed by the first men [01:39.67]to find them. Others searched for gold [01:41.98]in the rivers coming down the mountains. [01:44.65]They were after pieces of gold [01:47.32]that the rains had washed down from above. [01:53.30]The only way to find this gold was by panning. [01:58.21]First a gold miner put dirt in a metal pan [02:01.94]and added water. Then he shook the pan [02:04.68]so that the water would wash the dirt. [02:08.91]Slowly, he poured the water out of the pan. [02:11.77]If he was a lucky miner, [02:14.32]pieces of gold would remain. [02:19.18]Across the nation, newspapers carried stories [02:20.48]of the gold being found. [02:24.65]One told how thousands of people climbed the mountains [02:28.51]looking for gold. Some stories told how [02:31.68]others followed the rivers and streams with pans. [02:35.60]Each one hoped that the place he claimed [02:39.20]panned out well ¨C had some gold. [02:43.37]For many, gold mining did not pan out. [02:47.04]For a few, it panned out well. [02:51.03]But in time, huge machines were built [02:54.07]that could wash many tons of dirt at a time. [02:56.81]Panning died out. [03:02.10]The word, however, remained in the language. [03:07.88]Today, Americans still say, "It panned out well," [03:11.06]when something they have done pleases them. [03:15.29]A business, a discovery, a simple event [03:17.96]pans out well if it is successful. [03:21.63]Unhappily, sometimes things do not pan out. [03:27.23]In recent years, the word pan has taken on another meaning. [03:31.15]Today, it also means to criticize. [03:34.13]How it got this meaning is hard to discover. [03:37.37]But the job of a critic is to sometimes [03:41.79]pan the work of a writer, artist or singer. [03:48.38]Sometimes, critics may pan a movie or play so severely [03:51.18]that no one will go to see it. [03:53.54]There are times, however, [03:56.47]when a play became highly successful, [04:00.57]even though most of the critics panned it without mercy. [04:04.18]The pans should have washed out the play. [04:06.73]But, as actors have pointed out, [04:10.40]sometimes a critic's pan turns up gold. [04:26.39]This VOA Special English program [04:29.62]WORDS AND THEIR STORIES was written [04:33.36]by Herb Sutcliffe. I'm Warren Scheer.