pennon

Inherited from Middle English penoun, pennon, from Anglo-Norman penun, penoun, from Old French penne (“feather”) +‎ -on (diminutive suffix).

• IPA^(key): /ˈpɛnən/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛnən

pennon (plural pennons)

1. A thin, often triangular flag or streamer, especially as hung from the end of a lance or spear.^[1]
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 227:

     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:

   • 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]:

     Bar Harry England, that sweeps through our land
     With pennons painted in the blood of Harfleur:

   • 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:

     […] 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.

   • 1846, Herman Melville, Typee‎^[2], New York: Wiley and Putnam, Part 1, Chapter 23, p. 214:

     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;

   • 1863, Christina Rossetti, “A Royal Princess” in Isa Craig (ed.), An Offering to Lancashire, London: Emily Faithfull, p. 3,^[3]

     Vassal counts and princes follow where his pennon goes,

   • 1909, Charles Henry Ashdown, chapter 5, in British and Foreign Arms and Armour, London: T.C. & E.C. Jack, pages 65–66:

     Nearly all the Norman spears were embellished with pennons of from two to five points.

   • 1971, Gwen White, Antique Toys And Their Background, page 69:

     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.

2. (nautical) A long pointed streamer or flag on a vessel.

   Synonym: pennant

   • 1631, Michael Drayton, The Battaile of Agincourt, London: William Lee, p. 21,^[4]

     [...] a ship most neatly that was lim’d,

     In all her sailes with Flags and Pennons trim’d.

   • 1780, Hannah Cowley, The Maid of Arragon, London: L. Davis et al., ^[5]

     Fair Commerce wav’d her pennons in our ports;

   • 1886, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, chapter 11, in Jo's Boys […] ‎^[6], Boston: Roberts Brothers, page 208:

     […] 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.

3. (literary, obsolete) A wing (appendage of an animal's body enabling it to fly); any of the outermost primary feathers on a wing.

   Synonym: pinion

   • 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,^[7]

     […] 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,

   • 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:

     Fluttring his pennons vain plumb down he [Satan] drops
     Ten thousand fadom deep,

   • 1751, Moses Mendez, “Summer”, in The Seasons‎^[8], page 11:

     Favonius gentle skims along the Grove,
     And sheds sweet Odors from his Pennons light.

• pennoned

• pennoncel

Inherited from Old French penun.

• IPA^(key): /pɛ.nɔ̃/ ~ /pe.nɔ̃/

• Audio:

  (file)

pennon m (plural pennons)

1. pennon (triangular flag)
2. (nautical) pennant
3. (historical) a local urban militia in medieval Lyon

• pennonage

• “pennon”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.