fane

noun

1. (obsolete)A weathercock, a weather vane.

   “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.

   “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]”

3. A temple or sacred place.

   “And Pallas rear'd him; her ovvn unctuous fane / She made his habitation, vvhere vvith bulls / The youth of Athens, and vvith ſlaughter'd lambs / Her annual vvorſhip celebrate.”

   “Crown me, therefore,—and minstrelling near to thy fanes, Bacchus, thickly-adorned with rosy chaplets will I dance with a full-bosomed maid.”

   “Indeed, the bells were tolling, the people were trooping into the handsome church, the carriages of the inhabitants of the lordly quarter poured forth their pretty loads of devotees, in whose company Pen and his uncle, ending their edifying conversation, entered the fane.”

   “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.”

   “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.”

name

1. A surname.