Pantechnicon

It is plain, that such writers do not rise to the very idea of a University. They consider it a sort of bazaar, or pantechnicon, in which wares of all kinds are heaped together for sale in stalls independent of each other; and that, to save the purchasers the trouble of running about from shop to shop; or an hotel or lodging house, where all professions and classes are at liberty to congregate, varying, however, according to the season, each of them strange to each, and about its own work or pleasure; […]

To-day will the mighty cobweb-dome receive its last survey, previous to the contractors for the building handing it over to the painters and decorators. When these have accomplished their task, then will the walls and counters begin to receive their varied and valuable stores of natural and artificial productions. Waggon-loads upon waggon-loads must, we know, be exhausted, and pantechnica emptied, before the vast area, so delicately covered, shall cry “Enough, enough;” […]

We have a few economic museums, it is true; but they lack the notoriety which results from national support; and, if not carefully watched by their philanthropic promoters, these otherwise excellent places are apt to degenerate into mere advertising pantechnica.

Noticeably few of their buildings appear in the great eighteenth-century architectural pantechnica: Francis Smith’s prime came perhaps a little late for Vitruvius Britannicus, and in any case his houses were not of a kind to supply ammunition for Campbell’s palladianizing campaigns; by the time of Wolfe and Gandon they were very old-fashioned.

The Hyams extended their operations to London in 1845, when Lawrence Hyam became manager of the family’s pantechnica in Gracechurch Street, leaving his Bury St Edmunds shop in the management of one Joel Gale.

The pantechnicon was running away. It had perceived the wrath to come and was fleeing. Its guardians had evidently left it imperfectly scotched or braked, and it had got loose. […] [T]he onrush of the pantechnicon constituted a clear crisis. Lower down the gradient of Brougham Street was more dangerous, and it was within the possibilities that people inhabiting the depths of the street might find themselves pitched out of bed by the sharp corner of a pantechnicon that was determined to be a pantechnicon.

In fact, as they later found, the auxiliary vehicle was a very large removers' van – the kind known as a pantechnicon.

For we do not employ battleships as convoys, nor even as pantechnica conveying landing parties.