Meaning of pennon | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A thin, often triangular flag or streamer, especially as hung from the end of a lance or spear.
2. A long pointed streamer or flag on a vessel.
3. A wing (appendage of an animal's body enabling it to fly); any of the outermost primary feathers on a wing.
   literary, obsolete

Equivalents

Examples

“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:”

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

“[…] 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.”

“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, Vassal counts and princes follow where his pennon goes,”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“1780, Hannah Cowley, The Maid of Arragon, London: L. Davis et al., Fair Commerce wav’d her pennons in our ports;”

“[…] 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.”

“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,”

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

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

CEFR level