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vane.

A weather vane.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/veɪn/Received-Pronunciation, US/ven/Scotland/veːn/Wales
  1. A weather vane.

  2. Any of several usually relatively thin, rigid, flat, or sometimes curved surfaces radially mounted along an axis, as a blade in a turbine or a sail on a windmill, that is turned by or used to turn a fluid.

  3. The flattened, web-like part of a feather, consisting of a series of barbs on either side of the shaft.

  4. A sight on a sextant or compass.

  5. One of the metal guidance or stabilizing fins attached to the tail of a bomb or other missile.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English vane, Southern Middle English variant of fane, from Old English fana (“cloth, banner, flag”), from Proto-West Germanic *fanō, from Proto-Germanic *fanô, from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂n- (“something woven; weave; tissue; fabric; cloth”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Foone (“flag, banner”), Dutch vaan (“banner, flag”), German Low German Fahn (“flag”), German Fahne. Doublet of obsolete fane (“weathercock; banner”) and fanon.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.