A pantry is a small room, or a large closed cupboard, in a house where food is kept — the dry food especially: flour, rice, tins, jars, packets, bottles. It is not the fridge and it is not the whole kitchen; it is the store. Classically it is a proper little room off the kitchen, cool and windowless or with one small window, with shelves from floor to ceiling. That is the picture the word carries, and it comes from bigger old houses. In modern flats a "pantry" is often just a tall cupboard, and people still call it that. Two things about how it is used. It sounds slightly old-fashioned and slightly nice — estate agents love it, because it suggests a house with room to spare. And in American English it is more ordinary and more common than in British English; Americans will speak of the pantry where a British speaker might say the cupboard or the larder. There is also "food pantry", mainly American, which is a charity that gives free food to people who need it — a food bank. That sense is worth knowing because it appears in the news.