pennon
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈpɛnən/
rhymes: -ɛnən
Forms: form: pennons
Etymology: Inherited from Middle English penoun, pennon, from Anglo-Norman penun, penoun, from Old French penne (“feather”) + -on (diminutive suffix).
Senses: examples: text: Her yellow lockes crisped, like golden wyre,
About her shoulders weren loosely shed,
And when the winde emongst them did inspyre,
They waued like a penon wyde dispred
And low behinde her backe were scattered:
ref: 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 227:
text: Bar Harry England, that sweeps through our land
With pennons painted in the blood of Harfleur:
ref: 1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene v]:
text: […] in spite of a sort of screen intended to protect them from the wind, the flame of the torches streamed sideways into the air, like the unfurled pennon of a chieftain.
ref: 1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, chapter VII, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC, page 103:
text: Precisely in the middle of the quadrangle were placed perpendicularly in the ground, a hundred or more slender, fresh-cut poles, stripped of their bark, and decorated at the end with a floating pennon of white tappa;
ref: 1846, Herman Melville, Typee, New York: Wiley and Putnam, Part 1, Chapter 23, p. 214:
text: 1863, Christina Rossetti, “A Royal Princess” in Isa Craig (ed.), An Offering to Lancashire, London: Emily Faithfull, p. 3,
Vassal counts and princes follow where his pennon goes,
text: Nearly all the Norman spears were embellished with pennons of from two to five points.
ref: 1909, Charles Henry Ashdown, chapter 5, in British and Foreign Arms and Armour, London: T.C. & E.C. Jack, pages 65–66:
text: In 1821 the hobby-horse could have a real mane and a pretty topknot of wire, pennons and bells but with no wheels at the back.
ref: 1971, Gwen White, Antique Toys And Their Background, page 69:
glosses: A thin, often triangular flag or streamer, especially as hung from the end of a lance or spear.
examples: text: 1631, Michael Drayton, The Battaile of Agincourt, London: William Lee, p. 21,
… a ship most neatly that was lim’d,
In all her sailes with Flags and Pennons trim’d.
text: 1780, Hannah Cowley, The Maid of Arragon, London: L. Davis et al.,
Fair Commerce wav’d her pennons in our ports;
text: […] as his eye swept the horizon, clear against the rosy sky shone the white sails of a ship, so near that they could see the pennon at her mast-head and black figures moving on the deck.
ref: 1886, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, chapter 11, in Jo's Boys […] , Boston: Roberts Brothers, page 208:
topics: nautical
transport
synonyms: pennant
glosses: A long pointed streamer or flag on a vessel.
examples: text: 1630, Henry Lord, A Display of Two Forraigne Sects in the East Indies, London: Francis Constable, “The Religion of the Persees,” Chapter 4, p. 16,
[…] sodainly there descended before him, as his face was bent towards the earth, an Angell, whose wings had glorious Pennons, and whose face glistered as the beames of the Sunne,
text: Fluttring his pennons vain plumb down he [Satan] drops
Ten thousand fadom deep,
ref: 1667, John Milton, “Book II”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 933-934:
text: Favonius gentle skims along the Grove,
And sheds sweet Odors from his Pennons light.
ref: 1751, Moses Mendez, “Summer”, in The Seasons, page 11:
synonyms: pinion
glosses: A wing (appendage of an animal's body enabling it to fly); any of the outermost primary feathers on a wing.
Derived terms: pennoned
Related terms: pennoncel