A panhandle is an informal geographic

Political geography

Political geography is the field of human geography that is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures...

 term for an elongated arm-like protrusion of a geo-political entity, such as a subnational entity or a sovereign state

Sovereign state

A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...

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The term "panhandle" derives from the analogous part of a cooking pan, and its use is generally confined to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. A term used elsewhere is salient, derived from military salients. While similar to a peninsula

Peninsula

A peninsula is a piece of land that is bordered by water on three sides but connected to mainland. In many Germanic and Celtic languages and also in Baltic, Slavic and Hungarian, peninsulas are called "half-islands"....

 in shape, a panhandle is not surrounded by water on three sides and connected to a geographical

Physical geography

Physical geography is one of the two major subfields of geography. Physical geography is that branch of natural science which deals with the study of processes and patterns in the natural environment like the atmosphere, biosphere and geosphere, as opposed to the cultural or built environment, the...

 mainland

Mainland

Mainland is a name given to a large landmass in a region , or to the largest of a group of islands in an archipelago. Sometimes its residents are called "Mainlanders"...

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