Word of the day: pannier

The word of the day is pannier:

 

1. a basket, especially a large one, for carrying goods, provisions, etc.
2. a basket for carrying on a person's back, or one of a pair to be slung across the back of a beast of burden.
3. a similar type of bag, usually one of a pair, fastened over a bicycle's rear wheel.
4. (on a dress, skirt, etc.) a puffed arrangement of drapery at the hips.
5. an oval framework formerly used for distending the skirt of a woman's dress at the hips.

late 13c., "large basket for provisions," from O.Fr. panier, from L. panarium "bread basket," from panis "bread" (see food). (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pannier)

"For three more mornings she awoke in her bare room, breathing air strangely scented and listening to the strange sounds that had awakened her: once the bells of the panadero's burro coming up the trail with loaves sticking out of the panniers on both sides, twice the distant beating of kettles and hullaballoo of voices yelling in a strange tongue—the Chinese arising in their camp under the hill."

 - Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose