[ti:English Expressions That Don't Pan Out] [ar:Warren Scheer] [al:WORDS AND THEIR STORIES] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]Now, the VOA Special English program [00:15.83]WORDS AND THEIR STORIES. [00:19.02]Today's word, pan, [00:22.15]takes us back to the days [00:24.09]of the gold rush in California. [00:26.48]On January twenty-fourth, [00:29.72]eighteen forty-eight, [00:31.36]a man named James Wilson Marshall [00:34.64]discovered gold [00:36.19]in the territory of California. [00:38.23]The news spread quickly. [00:41.26]Thousands rushed west. [00:43.60]They traveled on foot, [00:45.74]by horseback and by boat [00:48.43]to reach the gold fields. [00:50.73]By eighteen forty-nine, [00:53.12]the great gold rush was on. [00:55.90]Towns and cities grew overnight. [01:00.18]Throughout the territory [01:02.37]¨C in the mountains, [01:04.11]along the streams and rivers [01:06.40]¨C thousands of people [01:07.95]searched for gold. [01:09.39]They had food to eat [01:11.48]and blankets to cover them. [01:13.97]They also had mules to ride, [01:16.80]and picks and pans [01:19.14]to search for gold. [01:21.38]Some found areas of mountain [01:25.12]rock thick with gold. [01:26.56]These men got rich. [01:28.65]But such areas were few [01:31.44]and quickly claimed [01:33.58]by the first men to find them. [01:35.91]Others searched for gold [01:38.35]in the rivers [01:39.55]coming down the mountains. [01:40.84]They were after pieces of gold [01:43.28]that the rains had washed [01:45.27]down from above. [01:46.46]The only way to find this gold [01:50.25]was by panning. [01:52.44]First a gold miner put dirt [01:56.17]in a metal pan and added water. [01:58.71]Then he shook the pan so that [02:01.79]the water would wash the dirt. [02:03.83]Slowly, he poured the water [02:06.68]out of the pan. [02:07.87]If he was a lucky miner, [02:10.41]pieces of gold would remain. [02:12.76]Across the nation, newspapers [02:16.59]carried stories of the gold being found. [02:19.08]One told how thousands of people [02:22.56]climbed the mountains looking for gold. [02:24.65]Some stories told how others [02:27.64]followed the rivers [02:28.93]and streams with pans. [02:30.48]Each one hoped that the place [02:33.82]he claimed panned out well [02:36.31]¨C had some gold. [02:38.15]For many, gold mining [02:41.19]did not pan out. [02:42.68]For a few, it panned out well. [02:46.11]But in time, huge machines [02:49.15]were built that could wash [02:51.20]many tons of dirt at a time. [02:53.04]Panning died out. [02:55.63]The word, however, [02:59.21]remained in the language. [03:00.95]Today, Americans still say, [03:04.89]"It panned out well," [03:06.73]when something [03:08.23]they have done pleases them. [03:09.64]A business, a discovery, [03:12.38]a simple event pans out well [03:15.32] if it is successful. [03:16.71]Unhappily, sometimes [03:18.65]things do not pan out. [03:20.49]In recent years, the word pan [03:24.47]has taken on another meaning. [03:26.21]Today, it also means to criticize. [03:29.75]How it got this meaning [03:31.69]is hard to discover. [03:33.03]But the job of a critic [03:35.02]is to sometimes pan the work [03:37.91]of a writer, artist or singer. [03:40.86]Sometimes, critics may pan [03:45.04]a movie or play so severely [03:47.13]that no one will go to see it. [03:49.81]There are times, however, [03:52.61]when a play became highly successful, [03:55.05]even though most of the critics [03:57.44]panned it without mercy. [03:59.43]The pans should have [04:02.17]washed out the play. [04:03.21]But, as actors have pointed out, [04:05.25]sometimes a critic's [04:07.39]pan turns up gold. [04:09.28](MUSIC) [04:19.93]This VOA Special English program [04:25.26]WORDS AND THEIR STORIES [04:27.00]was written by Herb Sutcliffe. [04:30.18]I'm Warren Scheer.