Argthtjtr

I once heard, I think it was on a TV program about searching for gold in Alaska, the phrase "panned out" used by someone who was panning for gold. He declared a specific area was "panned out" and I took his meaning to be there was no longer any gold to be found there.

Looking around, I found a user having a similar question here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pan%20out

Do anyone have an early reference for the use of the phrase and can we be sure its earliest usage referred to success?

There is the phrase "strike gold" that refers to success. The usage of "pan out" to mean the opposite seemed authentic to me.

Edit: Thanks for all the replies! I found early quotations here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pan_out where it is used in the narrow sense of extracting gold. If anyone has any early quotes of other usage, that would be interesting. This link has a quote from Reagan: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pan%20out. I have not found the source, is this from his presidency? According to the usage trends here: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/pan-out, the use of the term has increased substantially since the mid 80s. Did the usage change around that time to more generally refer to success, maybe in response to Reagan's usage of the phrase? More info would be interesting!

pan ( v) (Online Etymology Dictionary):

"to wash gravel or sand in a pan in search of gold," 1839,
from pan (n.); thus to pan out "turn out, succeed" (1868) is a
figurative use of this (literal sense from 1849).

pan out

1. pan out - be a success; "The idea panned out":
   bring home the bacon, deliver the goods, succeed, win, come through - attain success or reach a desired goal


2. pan out - wash dirt in a pan to separate out the precious minerals
   pan off, pan
   wash - separate dirt or gravel from (precious minerals)

(Thesaurus based on WordNet 3.0)

out (particle)

12. used to indicate exhaustion or extinction: the sugar's run out; put the light out.

(Collins)

Here's an example of (12), from family descriptions I've heard of soil fertility in the Deep South:

Those fields were cottoned out.

It means that from so many years of growing cotton, without enriching or resting the soil, the soil was fertility destroyed or damaged.

In a similar way, I could imagine someone saying that a mine or a region was panned out, meaning that gold had been panned to such an extent there that there was no significant gold left available there.

In the book Why Do We Say It? The Stories Behind The Words, Expressions and Cliches We Use(1985) the term "Pan Out" is defined as:

It's a gold mining term. One method of obtaining gold dust is to take a handful or so of the sand in which it's found and place it with a little water in a "pan." Then, by sloshing the water back and forth, the lighter sand, dirt, and pebbles can be sluiced over the edge while the gold dust, which is heavier, will remain behind in the pan - and so "pan out."

I have zero evidence but my guess to the meaning that makes a lot more sense is when you invert a cake out of the pan it “pans out”, anyone who has had the cake stick knows that the recipe a DEFINITEly did not pan out. I realize that this is probably not the origin of the phrase but it makes a lot more sense then the gold panning reference. 😂