panel
Pluralpanels
Pluralpanels
Formspanels
- 1A usually rectangular section of a surface or covering, such as a wall, fence, or door.
A loose panel in the fence rattled every time the wind picked up.
The car's rear panels were dented in the collision.
Note
The everyday sense, though the word began as cloth. Middle English already used it for a piece of cloth, a saddle pad, a pane of glass, a part or division, and a list of jurors. What links them is a bounded piece set off from what surrounds it.
- 2A group of people gathered to judge, interview, or discuss something, for example on a television or radio broadcast.
The panel debated the election results on last night's broadcast.
Conference organizers invited three economists to sit on the panel.
UsagePeople sit on a panel or serve on it; the group is a panel of experts or judges.
Similarcommittee, board, group
Note
The broadcast-and-committee meaning descends from the courtroom. In Middle English a panel was already the list of jurors and then the jurors themselves. Today it names any group convened to judge, advise or review, from an independent panel examining an organization to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
- 3A type of widget in a graphical user interface, such as a control panel.
The preferences panel lets users adjust notification behavior.
Drag the panel to the other side of the window to rearrange your workspace.
Similarpane
Note
Software uses the word for a region of a window that gathers related controls or settings. It forms compounds freely with whatever the region manages, such as admin panel, control panel and preferences panel, and with where it sits, as in side panel.
- 4
- 5An individual frame or drawing in a comic, typically one of several arranged in sequence on a page.
The final panel reveals the villain's identity in a dramatic close-up.
Manga artists often vary panel shapes to control the story's pacing.
Similarframe
Note
The comic artist's unit of storytelling: a strip moves from panel to panel, and the last one usually carries the punchline. A panel is often a bordered section of a larger page, which keeps it close to the everyday surface sense. Artists treat a panel's size, shape and placement as tools for controlling pace.
Checked 7 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Panels divide a comic's storytelling into successive units. en.wikipedia.org
- The last frame usually carries the punchline. westerncape.gov.za
- Panels can be borderless, and a panel can occupy an entire page. en.wikipedia.org
- Panel size, shape and placement affect narrative pace. en.wikipedia.org
- 6A flat section of wood or other material set into a surrounding frame, often sunken or raised, as in a door, ceiling, or wainscoting.
Light from the chandelier caught each recessed panel in the coffered ceiling.
Craftsmen restored the oak panels of the courtroom's wainscoting.
Note
In architecture, this panel is a compartment framed by surrounding margins or moldings, and it may be sunken or raised. Ceilings and wainscoting are its natural homes. Woodworkers describe the same thing from the board's side: the panel is the board whose edges fit into grooves in the frame around it.
Checked 7 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Architectural panels can be recessed or raised; depth alone does not define them. collections.tepapa.govt.nz
- Panels occur in ceilings and wainscoting. en.wiktionary.org
- In woodworking, a panel can be a board fitted into grooves in its surrounding frame. gutenberg.org
- 7A slab or plank of wood used as a surface for painting instead of canvas.
The conservator examined the panel for worm damage before cleaning the paint layer.
Many early Renaissance altarpieces were painted on poplar panels rather than canvas.
Similarboard
- 8An electrical device with a flat, insulated face carrying switches, dials, and meters, used to run other electrical equipment.
A red light on the main panel warned the operators that a pump had stopped.
The plant has two backup panels in case the control room loses power.
Similarconsole, switchboard
Note
In use the word rarely stands alone: a noun in front says what the board holds or does, as in instrument panel or control panel. Context tells the hardware apart from the on-screen widget, which shares the name control panel; a technician opening a panel in a plant room means a physical board with real switches, wiring and meters behind its face.
Less common meanings
- 9A group of tests or assays administered as a set; also called a battery.
Her annual physical included a metabolic panel and a cholesterol test.
The lab runs a full allergy panel when symptoms suggest multiple triggers.
Similarbattery, profile, screen
Note
Laboratory medicine often names a panel after what it measures, as in lipid panel, metabolic panel and allergy panel. A lipid panel, for instance, reports total cholesterol, HDL, LDL and triglycerides together. The fuller phrase "panel of tests" also appears, and battery is the usual synonym. In practice, a test is ordered as a panel when its results are meant to be read together.
Checked 7 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Panel names need not identify what is measured: customized panels can have customer-specific names. cdn.iuhealth.org
- A lipid panel reports total cholesterol, HDL, LDL and triglycerides together. nhlbi.nih.gov
- Panel results are intended to be considered together. medlineplus.gov
- 10To fit a room, wall, or other surface with panels.
The contractors will panel the conference room in walnut next month.
Victorian builders often paneled entry halls to convey solidity and wealth.
UsageThe material follows in or with: paneled in oak. Americans write paneled, paneling; British English doubles the l.
- 11The whole jury; the complete group of jurors selected to hear a case.
The panel deliberated for two days before reaching a verdict.
Defense counsel objected that the panel did not reflect the community's makeup.
Similarjury
Note
Here the name moves from the document to the people it lists, a shift Middle English had already made. The word now treats the jurors as a single body: the panel deliberates, and the panel reaches a verdict. The list of summoned jurors is where the usage started.
Checked 7 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- The jury sense developed from the document listing summoned jurors to the people listed. gutenberg.org
- The sense referring to jurors already existed in Middle English. en.wiktionary.org
- The list of summoned jurors was the starting point for this jury usage. gutenberg.org
- 12A plain strip or band of fabric, such as velvet or plush, set at intervals lengthwise on the skirt of a dress for ornament.
The gown's skirt alternated panels of midnight-blue velvet with sections of pale silk.
A single plush panel ran down the front of the skirt from waist to hem.
Note
In dressmaking, this panel is ornament rather than structure. It is a plain band, often of velvet or plush, set lengthwise down a skirt at intervals. A skirt described as "paneled" in this sense is decorated with these bands.
- 13To enter jurors' names on the official list for a trial; to empanel.
Note
This verb is largely obsolete, and empanel has taken over most of its work. In legal writing today a jury is usually empaneled, though "paneled" still turns up now and then in American court writing. In older texts the plain form means entering names on the list of summoned jurors.
Checked 7 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- The narrow sense of entering jurors on an official list is obsolete. en.wiktionary.org
- Panel also occurs in modern legal writing about assembling juries; empanel has not completely replaced it. casesearch.oea.dc.gov
- The legal use survives: a 2025 Hawaiʻi Judiciary announcement refers to a “paneled juror.” courts.state.hi.us
- Panel historically meant entering jurors’ names on an official list. en.wiktionary.org
- 14To put a panel, a plain cushioned saddle, on the back of an animal, typically a mule or donkey.
Note
Smollett's 1755 translation of Don Quixote shows this verb at work: Sancho is told to "saddle his horse and pannel his ass." The horse gets a proper saddle, and the ass gets only the humbler cloth saddle. The verb is obsolete and appears there with a double n.
- 15A piece of cloth that serves as a saddle.
A panel and wanty, packsaddle and ped, with line to fetch litter, and halters for hed
1557, Thomas Tusser, A Hundreth Good Pointes of HusbandrieNote
This is the sense closest to the word's cloth origin: plain cloth laid on an animal's back in place of a true saddle. The 1580 edition of Thomas Tusser's Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie lists it among stable gear, beside the packsaddle and halters. The sense is obsolete, so keep it to historical writing. The saddle pad is its living relative.
Checked 7 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- The word's etymology goes back to a word meaning cloth. en.wiktionary.org
- Panel has a historical sense meaning cloth used as a saddle. en.wiktionary.org
- Thomas Tusser wrote A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie, first published in 1557. en.wikipedia.org
- The passage is absent from the reproduced 1557 text. It appears in the expanded Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, first published in 1573, under 'A digression to husbandlie furniture' in the reproduced 1580 edition. gutenberg.org
- The saddle-pad sense is related to the historical cloth sense. en.wikisource.org
- 16In a framed structure such as a bridge truss, the section between two neighboring posts or struts.
- 17A document listing the names of the people summoned by the sheriff to serve as jurors.
- 18One of the flat faces of a stone that has been hewn to shape.
- 19A soft pad fitted beneath the saddletree to prevent the saddle from chafing the animal's back.
- 20A list of doctors who could provide limited free healthcare in Britain before the National Health Service was introduced.
- 21In Scottish criminal courts, an accused person who has been charged and brought to the bar to be tried.
- 22A heap of dressed ore: ore that has been sorted and cleaned after extraction.
- 23One of the districts into which a mine is divided by extra-large pillars of coal, in a system of extracting coal in separate sections.
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Origin
From Middle English panel (a piece of cloth, saddle pad, or pane of glass, but also a jury list), from Anglo-Norman panel, from Vulgar Latin *pannellus, a diminutive of Latin pannus ("cloth, rag, garment"), whose earlier origin is uncertain; a link with Old English fana ("flag") has been proposed but is disputed.
Checked 7 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- English panel comes through Middle English panel and Anglo-Norman panel from reconstructed Vulgar Latin *pannellus, a diminutive of Latin pannus. en.wiktionary.org
- Middle English panel meant a piece of cloth, a saddle pad, a pane of glass, and a jury list. en.wiktionary.org
- Latin pannus meant cloth, rag, or garment. en.wiktionary.org