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Webster 1828 Edition


Gonfalon

GON'FALON


Definition 2024


gonfalon

gonfalon

English

A civic gonfalon.

Alternative forms

Noun

gonfalon (plural gonfalons)

  1. A standard or ensign, consisting of a pole with a crosspiece from which a banner is suspended, especially as used in church processions, but also for civic and military display.
    • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, book 5, lines 588–590:
      Ten thousand thousand Ensignes high advanc'd,
      Standards, and Gonfalons twixt Van and Reare
      Streame in the Aire, and for distinction serve
    • 1910, July 12, Franklin Pierce Adams, poem “That Double Play Again” aka “Baseball's Sad Lexicon”, New York Evening Mail, page 6:
      Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
      Making a Giant hit into a double—
      Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
      “Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
    • 1922, Clark Ashton Smith, Quest:
      With vermilion leaf or bronze—
      Tatters of gorgeous gonfalons

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