As nouns the difference between hotcake and pan

is that hotcake is a pancake while pan is a wide, flat receptacle used around the house, especially for cooking.

As a proper noun Pan is

greek god of nature, often visualized as half goat and half man playing pipes. His Roman counterpart is Faunus.

As an acronym PAN is

acronym of lang=en.

As a verb pan is

to wash in a pan (of earth, sand etc. when searching for gold).

As an adjective pan is

pansexual.