English

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.
   • ca 1935, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fall of Arthur, Harper Collins, London, 2013, ISBN 978-0-00-748994-7, p 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 Latin fanum ‎(“temple, place dedicated to a deity”).

Noun

fane ‎(plural fanes)

1. 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.

   • 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

French

Etymology

From faner.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fan/

Noun

fane f ‎(plural fanes)

1. (archaic) dry leaf
2. top (of carrot, radish); haulm (of bean, potato)