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pennon

UK/ˈpɛnən/US/ˈpɛnən/
nounC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechToo rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

Other forms: pennons

A pennon is a long narrow flag flown from a lance. A knight's pennon.

It marked who a rider was in a fight where nothing else could be seen. A pennon was smaller than a banner, and carrying a banner was a higher rank.

F l a n k e r · Public domain

Definitions of pennon

  1. 1nounpennonA long narrow flag flown from a lance.C2

    “The pennon was the only way to tell one rider from another.”

pennon is a flag.

Where it comes from

Old French penon comes from penne, a feather, from Latin penna.

  1. Anglo-Norman

    penun

  2. Middle English

    pennon

  3. English, today

    pennon

Built from

  • penoun · Middle English — long narrow flag attached to a lance or used in other contexts; one who bears a pennon, knight bachelor; plume of feathers; strip around the edge of a shield
  • penoun · Anglo-Norman — flag attached to a lance
  • penne · Old French — feather; wing

From Middle English pennon, from Anglo-Norman penun. From Late Middle English pennon, penoun (“long narrow flag attached to a lance or used in other contexts; one who bears a pennon, knight bachelor; plume of feathers; strip around the edge of a shield”), from Anglo-Norman penun (“feather of an arrow”), penoun (“flag attached to a lance”), Middle French pennon, penoun, and Old French penon (“flag attached to a lance”) (modern French pennon), from penne (“feather; wing”) + -on. Penne is inherited from Latin penna (“feather (especially a flight feather), pinion; wing”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European peth₂- (“to spread out; to fly (in the sense of spreading out wings)”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

pennon in the wild

  • The flag's unique shape is a combination of two single pennants, and is known as a double-pennon.

    Flag of Nepal

  • The pennon is a flag resembling the guidon in shape, but only half the size.

    Pennon

  • Heraldic flags include banners, standards, pennons and their variants, gonfalons, guidons, and pinsels.

    Heraldic flag

  • A pennant is a commemorative pennon typically used to show support for a particular athletic team.

    Pennant (sports)

  • The election symbol of the party is a pennon.

    Akhanda Nepal Party

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the penne family

pen

pennon — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others