- 1（風車、水車、渦輪的）葉片、翼板；風向標（weather vane：風信雞）
A vane is a thin flat blade that wind or water pushes against, turning a shaft so a machine can work — the blades of a windmill, of a wind turbine, of a water wheel, of a fan inside an engine. The idea is always ‘flat piece + moving air or water + turning motion’. In careful technical English the blades of a big modern wind turbine are usually called blades, and vane is more common for smaller or older machines and for parts inside pumps and engines, but you will meet both. The word has two other everyday uses worth knowing: a weather vane (or weathervane), the arrow or metal on a roof that turns to show wind direction — that is the oldest meaning; and the flat feathered part on each side of a feather's shaft. It is a countable noun and sounds slightly technical or old — an ordinary conversation is more likely to say ‘blade’.
組成From Middle English vane, a southern form of fane, from Old English fana ‘cloth, banner, flag’, going back to an Indo-European root *peh₂n- meaning ‘woven thing, cloth’. So a vane was first a piece of cloth flying in the wind — which explains the weather vane on the roof long before it explained any machine.
同家族的字
- fanethe older English form of the same word, meaning weathercock or banner — now obsolete
原始詞典資料7 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Vanename
- 1
A surname.
- 2
A unisex given name transferred from the surname.
- If it had not been for George’s early walk, and for the arrival of the red motorcar, she and Annira, and their father, and Alastair, and Uncle Edward Erskine (the Dean of Camford), and his daughter Vane would at this moment have been gaily bidding one another “Good morning” at the breakfast table.
- Her company, all English, will include Edmund Gwenn, C. M. Hallard, Herbert Marshall and Vane Featherston.
vanenoun/veɪn/
- 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
biologynatural-sciencesornithologyThe 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
engineeringgovernmentmilitaryOne of the metal guidance or stabilizing fins attached to the tail of a bomb or other missile.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。