Handpan

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A type of steelpan that is played with the hands, typically resting on the player's lap.

    "While I grew up playing brass musical instruments, I gravitated to percussion as a side music hobby as a teen and later began to collect and play African drums and other interesting percussion instruments, such as steel handpans."

Synonyms

All synonyms
hang

Example

More examples

"While I grew up playing brass musical instruments, I gravitated to percussion as a side music hobby as a teen and later began to collect and play African drums and other interesting percussion instruments, such as steel handpans."

Etymology

Blend of hand + steelpan, coined as a generic alternative to Hang, late 2000s.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.