vane
/veɪn
/noun
1A broad blade attached to a rotating axis or wheel which pushes or is pushed by wind or water and forms part of a machine or device such as a windmill, propeller, or turbine.Advanced technology means the giant vanes of the turbines swivel to search for wind but cut out in stormy conditions....
- The wind or air rising through the turbine turns the vanes in the turbine and gets the air moving near the top of the house, drawing moisture out.
- Early views of Sydney were dominated by the sails of the ships which had propelled the newcomers across the oceans and by the vanes of the windmills which provided the settlement with its first forms of industrial power.
1.1 short for weathervane.He also tested and fitted lightning conductors, vanes and weather cocks on the tallest of buildings....
- Unlike the compass, the vane was clearly a scientific instrument, though the sort that comes in the Home Weather Kit you might give your dad shortly after his retirement.
1.2The flat part on either side of the shaft of a feather.Shafts and vanes are present in the feathers, but no direct evidence of the shafts remains....
- The vane on one side of the feather's spine was wider than the one on the other.
- The facial disk, which lies over the ruff, is composed of feathers with open vanes.
1.3A broad, flat projecting surface designed to guide the motion of a projectile, such as a feather on an arrow or a fin on a torpedo.For fletching there are two options: either plastic vanes or real feathers....
- Feathers and vanes work about equally well with less-powerful target crossbows.
- This rigid plastic curled vane can be taped or glued to the arrow shaft using a normal fletching jig.
Derivatives
vaned
[usually in combination]: a three-vaned windmill...
- In the vaned impeller, the fluid undergoes an abrupt acceleration and change of direction as it enters the rotor.
- The obtained results demonstrate that the centrifugal pump with the optimized vaned diffuser has compact size compared with the original one while the performance requirements have been met.
- Other feather types similar in some respects to down and vaned feathers while unique in others include filoplumes, bristles, and semiplumes.
Origin
Late Middle English: dialect variant of obsolete fane 'banner', of Germanic origin.
This word for a ‘broad blade (driven by the wind)’ is a dialect variant of obsolete fane ‘banner’, of Germanic origin.