fane

See also: Fane and fané

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /feɪn/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪn
• Homophones: feign, foehn, fain (archaic)

Etymology 1

From Middle English fane, from Old English fana (“cloth, banner”), from Proto-Germanic *fanô (“cloth, flag”), from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂n- (“to weave; something woven; cloth, fabric, tissue”). Compare vane.

Noun

fane (plural fanes)

1. (obsolete) A weathercock, a weather vane.
   • 1801, John Baillie, An Impartial History of the Town and County of Newcastle Upon Tyne, page 541,

     The ſteeple had become old and ruinous; and therefore the preſent one was built about the year 1740. It had, at that time, four fanes mounted on ſpires, on the four corners; theſe being judged too weak for the fanes, were taken down in 1764, and the roof of the ſteeple altered.

2. (obsolete) A banner, especially a military banner.
   • c. 1935, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fall of Arthur, 2013 edition, Harper Collins, London, →ISBN, page 18:

     So fate fell-woven forward drave him,
     and with malice Mordred his mind hardened,
     saying that war was wisdom and waiting folly.
     ‘Let their fanes be felled and their fast places
     bare and broken, burned their havens,
     and isles immune from march of arms
     or Roman reign now reek to heaven
     in fires of vengeance! [I.18-25]

Etymology 2

From Middle English fane (“temple”), from Latin fanum (“temple, place dedicated to a deity”). Doublet of fanum.

Noun

fane (plural fanes)

2. A temple or sacred place.
   • 1850, The Madras Journal of Literature and Science, Volume 16, page 64,

     Fanes are built around it for a distance of 3, 4 or 5 Indian miles; but whether these are Jaina, or more strictly Hindu is not mentioned.

   • 1884, Henry David Thoreau, Summer: From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, page 78,

     The priests of the Germans and Britons were druids. They had their sacred oaken groves. Such were their steeple houses. Nature was to some extent a fane to them.

   • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 5, in The Mirror and the Lamp:

     He was thinking; but the glory of the song, the swell from the great organ, the clustered lights, […], the height and vastness of this noble fane, its antiquity and its strength—all these things seemed to have their part as causes of the thrilling emotion that accompanied his thoughts.

   • 1918, Christopher Morley, 'The Haunted Bookshop':

     [The bookshop] seemed like a secret fane, some shrine of curious rites, and the young man's throat was tightened by a stricture which was half agitation and half tobacco.

   • 1993 [1978], H. P. Blavatsky, Boris de Zirkoff (editor), The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1: Cosmogenesis, page 458,

     And this ideal conception is found beaming like a golden ray upon each idol, however coarse and grotesque, in the crowded galleries of the sombre fanes of India and other Mother lands of cults.

Related terms

• profane

Anagrams

• NEFA, neaf

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French

Etymology

From faner.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fan/

Noun

fane f (plural fanes)

1. (archaic) dry leaf
2. (cooking) The leaves attached to vegetable, but which are themselves not usually consumed, such as those of carrot, radishes and cauliflowers.
3. (horticulture, agriculture) The leaves of any vegetable which is not itself a leaf vegetable, and which are not usually attached to the edible part, such as those of potatoes, tomatoes and beans.

Further reading

• “fane” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

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Middle English

Etymology 1

Inherited from Old English fana.

Alternative forms

• fone, fanu

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfaːn(ə)/

Noun

fane

2. (rare) A particular kind of white-coloured iris.

References

• “fāne (n.(2))” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-12-31.

Etymology 2

Inherited from Old English fana, from Proto-Germanic *fanô; doublet of fanon.

Alternative forms

• vane, vaane, phane

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfaːn(ə)/
• (Southern ME) IPA^(key): /ˈvaːn(ə)/

Noun

fane (plural fanes)

2. A flag or gonfalon; a piece of fabric or other visible structure used for identification on the field.
3. A flag borne on sea-going vessels, especially a long triangular one.
4. A weathervane or weathercock (used to indicate changeableness)

Descendants

• English: fane, vane
• Scots: fane, faan, thane, phane

References

• “fāne (n.(1))” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-12-31.

Etymology 3

Borrowed from Latin fānum, from Proto-Italic *faznom.

Alternative forms

• phane

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfaːn(ə)/

Noun

fane

2. (rare) A temple, especially that used to worship Roman gods.

Descendants

• English: fane

References

• “fāne (n.(3))” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-12-31.