ventail
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Old French ventaille.
Noun
ventail (plural ventails)
- (obsolete) A piece of armor used to protect the neck.
- (historical) The movable front part of a helmet, originally including the visor but later specifically the separate lower section.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.ii:
- A comely knight, all arm'd in complete wize, / Through whose bright ventayle lifted vp on hye / His manly face [...] Lookt foorth [...].
- 1937, David Jones, In Parenthesis, Part 7:
- nor no ventaille to this darkening / and masked face lifts to grope the air […].
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.ii:
- (obsolete, rare) That part of a medieval helmet which is intended for the admission of air.
References
- “ventail”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
Anagrams
French
Pronunciation
Noun
ventail m (plural ventaux)
- Alternative form of vantail
Usage notes
- This spelling was a product of the 1990 French spelling reforms.
Further reading
- “ventail”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Categories:
- English terms derived from Old French
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with obsolete senses
- English terms with historical senses
- English terms with rare senses
- French 2-syllable words
- French terms with IPA pronunciation
- French lemmas
- French nouns
- French countable nouns
- French masculine nouns