vane
Pluralvanes
Often confused with vain and vein
- 1A weather vane: a pivoting pointer that turns to show which way the wind is blowing.
The copper vane on the church steeple swung north as the storm rolled in.
Fishermen in the harbor glanced up at the vane before deciding whether to set out.
Similarweathercock
Note
The word began as cloth: Old English fana meant a banner or flag, and vane is the southern English form of an older word, fane, from a root for something woven. A banner on a pole turns with the wind just as a vane does, which is how the name passed from the flag to the metal pointer on a steeple.
- 2One of several usually thin, rigid, flat or curved surfaces mounted radially on an axis, like a turbine blade or windmill sail, that is turned by a fluid or used to move one.
Steam rushing past the turbine's vanes spins the generator shaft.
A single cracked vane threw the whole pump out of balance.
Similarblade
- 3The flat, web-like part of a feather, made up of rows of barbs on each side of the central shaft.
Under the microscope, the barbs of the vane could be seen locked tightly together.
When a jay preens, it draws each feather through its beak to smooth the vanes.
Note
Ornithologists also call it the vexillum. Each barb carries tiny barbules that hook onto those of the next barb, so the web holds together much like a zipper, and a preening bird is re-hooking them. In flight feathers the two vanes on either side of the shaft are often unequal, with the narrower one along the leading edge.
- 4One of the metal fins on the tail of a bomb or other missile that guide or stabilize it in flight.
The bomb's tail vanes were bent during loading, so the crew set it aside.
Each vane on the missile can tilt slightly to steer it toward the target.
Similarfin
Note
Unlike the turbine or windmill blade, these vanes do not spin: they stay fixed on the tail, or tilt only a little, to keep the weapon steady and on course. Fin is the everyday synonym.
- 5A sight on a sextant or compass, used to aim the instrument at a distant object.
She lined up the compass vane with the lighthouse and read off the bearing.
Through the slit in the vane, the navigator found the headland and took a bearing.
Similarsight
Note
Sighting instruments often carry vanes in pairs: the user looks through a narrow slit in the near one and lines up a thread or wire in the far one with the target, then reads off the bearing.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English vane, a southern variant of fane, from Old English fana ("cloth, banner, flag"), from Proto-West Germanic *fanō and Proto-Germanic *fanô, from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂n- ("something woven; cloth"). It is cognate with Dutch vaan ("banner, flag") and German Fahne, and a doublet of obsolete fane ("weathercock; banner") and fanon.