What Does Pantry Mean?
A pantry is a small room or large cupboard where you keep food, such as flour, tins, rice and cereal.
It is a noun, and you can count it: one pantry, two pantries.
There are tins of soup in the pantry.
Mum went to the pantry for some flour.
🔊 Pronunciation
PAN-tree
The stress is on the first part.
🗣️ Natural Examples
The pantry was full of rice, pasta and beans.
We keep the biscuits on the top shelf of the pantry.
Can you get the jam from the pantry?
They cleaned out the pantry before the move.
The school collected tins for the local food pantry.
🛠️ How to Use It
Pantry is a normal word at home.
- A pantry is usually a small room near the kitchen. It can also be a cupboard.
- A food pantry is a place that gives food to people who need it. This meaning is common in the US.
- It is countable: a pantry, pantries.
- Use in the pantry.
🤝 Common Word Partners
- in the pantry
- a well-stocked pantry
- a pantry shelf
- a pantry door
- a food pantry
- stock the pantry
👯 Similar and Related Words
- larder: an older British word for a cool room or cupboard for food.
- cupboard: a place with a door where you keep things.
- kitchen: the room where you cook.
- storeroom: a room for keeping supplies.
⚠️ Common Mistakes
Spelling. There is no extra letter in the middle.
❌ pantery, pantrie
✅ pantry
Use in.
❌ The rice is on the pantry.
✅ The rice is in the pantry.
Plural. y becomes ies.
❌ pantrys
✅ pantries
💬 In a Conversation
Sam: Where is the pasta?
Mia: In the pantry.
Sam: Where is the pantry?
Mia: Behind the kitchen door.
Sam: And where is the bread?
Mia: In the bread bin.
Sam: But a pantry is a bread room!
Mia: The word remembers. The shelves forgot.
🕵️ Where Does It Come From?
The word entered English in the early 1300s as panterie or pantre, meaning a storeroom or closet, especially for bread. It came from Anglo-French and Old French paneterie, "bread room".
Behind it is Medieval Latin panataria, the room of a servant who looked after the food. That word comes from Latin panis, "bread".
Over time, people stopped hearing the "bread" part. The word came to mean a room for any food, and sometimes for cleaning plates and knives.
💡 The OddLingo Trick
Hunt for the hidden word: pan.
Pan is bread in Spanish, and the Latin panis is its ancestor. A pantry is a bread room, and you will also meet this old root in Companion, "with bread".