From Middle English fane, from Old English fana (“cloth, banner”), from Proto-West Germanic *fanō, from Proto-Germanic *fanô (“cloth, flag”), from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂n- (“to weave; something woven; cloth, fabric, tissue”). Doublet of fanon and vane.
Meanings
(obsolete) A weathercock, a weather vane.
The ſteeple had become old and ruinous; and therefore the preſent one was built about the year 1740. It had, at that time, four fanes mounted on ſpires, on the four corners; theſe being judged too weak for the fanes, were taken down in 1764, and the roof of the ſteeple altered. 1801, John Baillie, An Impartial History of the Town and County of Newcastle Upon Tyne, page 541:
(obsolete) A banner, especially a military banner.
So fate fell-woven forward drave him,
and with malice Mordred his mind hardened,
saying that war was wisdom and waiting folly.
‘Let their fanes be felled and their fast places
bare and broken, burned their havens,
and isles immune from march of arms
or Roman reign now reek to heaven
in fires of vengeance! [I.18-25] c. 1935, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fall of Arthur, Harper Collins, London, published 2013, →ISBN, page 18:
From Middle English fane (“temple”), from Latin fānum (“temple, place dedicated to a deity”). Doublet of fanum.
Meanings
A temple or sacred place.
Indeed, the bells were tolling, the people were trooping into the handsome church, the carriages of the inhabitants of the lordly quarter poured forth their pretty loads of devotees, in whose company Pen and his uncle, ending their edifying conversation, entered the fane. 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 41, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:
[The bookshop] seemed like a secret fane, some shrine of curious rites, and the young man's throat was tightened by a stricture which was half agitation and half tobacco. 1919, Christopher Morley, “(please specify the page)”, in The Haunted Bookshop, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, →OCLC:
He was thinking; but the glory of the song, the swell from the great organ, the clustered lights, […] the height and vastness of this noble fane, its antiquity and its strength—all these things seemed to have their part as causes of the thrilling emotion that accompanied his thoughts. 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter V, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
Crown me, therefore,—and minstrelling near to thy fanes, Bacchus, thickly-adorned with rosy chaplets will I dance with a full-bosomed maid. 1830, Anacreon, “Ode V. On the Rose.”, in T. W. C. Edwards, transl., Τα του Ανακρεοντος του Τηιου Μελη = The Odes of Anacreon the Teian Bard, Literally Translated into English Prose; […], London: […] [J. M‘Gowan and Son] for W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, […], →OCLC, page 22:
Fanes are built around it for a distance of 3, 4 or 5 Indian miles; but whether these are Jaina, or more strictly Hindu is not mentioned. 1850, The Madras Journal of Literature and Science, volume 16, page 64:
It was a wonderful sight to see the full moon looking down on the ruined fane of Kør. 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
And Pallas rear'd him; her ovvn unctuous fane / She made his habitation, vvhere vvith bulls / The youth of Athens, and vvith ſlaughter'd lambs / Her annual vvorſhip celebrate. 1791, Homer, “[The Iliad.] Book II.”, in W[illiam] Cowper, transl., The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, Translated into Blank Verse, […], volume I, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], →OCLC, page 52, lines 664–667:
The priests of the Germans and Britons were druids. They had their sacred oaken groves. Such were their steeple houses. Nature was to some extent a fane to them. 1884, Henry David Thoreau, Summer: From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, page 78:
And this ideal conception is found beaming like a golden ray upon each idol, however coarse and grotesque, in the crowded galleries of the sombre fanes of India and other Mother lands of cults. 1888, H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Volume 1: Cosmogenesis, Quest Books 1993 page 458