pennon
English
Etymology
(deprecated template usage) [etyl] Anglo-Norman penun, penoun, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Old French penne (“feather”) + -on diminutive suffix.
Pronunciation
Noun
pennon (plural pennons)
- A thin, often triangular flag or streamer, especially as hung from the end of a lance or spear.[1]
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen, London: William Ponsonbie, Book 2, Canto 3, p. 227,[2]
- Her yellow lockes crisped, like golden wyre,
- About her shoulders weren loosely shed,
- And when the winde emongst them did inspyre,
- They waued like a penon wyde dispred
- And low behinde her backe were scattered:
- c. 1598 William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act III, Scene 5,[3]
- Bar Harry England, that sweeps through our land
- With pennons painted in the blood of Harfleur:
- 1820, Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, 1821, Volume 1, Chapter 7, p. 103,[4]
- […] in spite of a sort of screen intended to protect them from the wind, the flame of the torches streamed sideways into the air, like the unfurled pennon of a chieftain.
- 1846, Herman Melville, Typee, New York: Wiley and Putnam, Part 1, Chapter 23, p. 214,[5]
- Precisely in the middle of the quadrangle were placed perpendicularly in the ground, a hundred or more slender, fresh-cut poles, stripped of their bark, and decorated at the end with a floating pennon of white tappa;
- 1863, Christina Rossetti, “A Royal Princess” in Isa Craig (ed.), An Offering to Lancashire, London: Emily Faithfull, p. 3,[6]
- Vassal counts and princes follow where his pennon goes,
- 1909, Charles Henry Ashdown, British and Foreign Arms and Armour, London: T.C. & E.C. Jack, Chapter 5, pages 65-66,[7]
- Nearly all the Norman spears were embellished with pennons of from two to five points.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen, London: William Ponsonbie, Book 2, Canto 3, p. 227,[2]
- (nautical) A long pointed streamer or flag on a vessel.
- Synonym: pennant
- 1631, Michael Drayton, The Battaile of Agincourt, London: William Lee, p. 21,[8]
- [...] a ship most neatly that was lim’d,
- In all her sailes with Flags and Pennons trim’d.
- 1780, Hannah Cowley, The Maid of Arragon, London: L. Davis et al., [9]
- Fair Commerce wav’d her pennons in our ports;
- 1886, Louisa May Alcott, Jo’s Boys, Boston: Roberts Brothers, Chapter 11, p. 208,[10]
- […] as his eye swept the horizon, clear against the rosy sky shone the white sails of a ship, so near that they could see the pennon at her mast-head and black figures moving on the deck.
- (literary, obsolete) A wing (appendage of an animal's body enabling it to fly); any of the outermost primary feathers on a wing.
- Synonym: pinion
- 1630, Henry Lord, A Display of Two Forraigne Sects in the East Indies, London: Francis Constable, “The Religion of the Persees,” Chapter 4, p. 16,[11]
- […] sodainly there descended before him, as his face was bent towards the earth, an Angell, whose wings had glorious Pennons, and whose face glistered as the beames of the Sunne,
- 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 2, lines 933-934,[12]
- Fluttring his pennons vain plumb down he [Satan] drops
- Ten thousand fadom deep,
- 1751, Moses Mendez, “Summer” in The Seasons, p. 11,[13]
- Favonius gentle skims along the Grove,
- And sheds sweet Odors from his Pennons light.
Derived terms
Translations
a thin triangular flag or streamer
References
- ^ John Cowell, The Interpreter: or Booke containing the signification of words wherein is set foorth the true meaning of all, Cambridge: John Legate, 1607: “Penon, […] is a Standard, Banner, or Ensigne, caried in warre.”[1]
French
Noun
pennon m (plural pennons)
Derived terms
Categories:
- English terms derived from Anglo-Norman
- English terms derived from Old French
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/ɛnən
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- en:Nautical
- English literary terms
- English terms with obsolete senses
- en:Flags
- French lemmas
- French nouns
- French countable nouns
- French masculine nouns
- fr:Nautical
- French terms with historical senses