Lune
name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A fit of lunacy or madness; a period of frenzy; a crazy or unreasonable freak. obsolete
"Why woman, your husband is in his olde Lunes againe: […]"
- 2 A concave figure formed by the intersection of the arcs of two circles on a plane, or on a sphere the intersection between two great semicircles.
"What he worried about was any eventual convexity, a shrinking, it might be, of the planet itself to some palpable curvature of whatever he would be standing on, so that he would be left sticking out like a projected radius, unsheltered and reeling across the empty lunes of his tiny sphere."
- 3 A leash for a hawk.
"And thenne was he ware of a Faucon came fleynge ouer his hede toward an hyghe elme / and longe lunys aboute her feet / and she flewe vnto the elme to take her perche / the lunys ouer cast aboute a bough / And whanne she wold haue taken her flyghte / she henge by the legges fast / and syre launcelot sawe how he henge"
- 4 Anything crescent-shaped.
- 1 A river in Cumbria and Lancashire, England, which passes Lancaster.
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"I bought an mp3 copy of Debussy's "Clair de Lune" in an online music store."
Etymology
From Latin lūna (“moon”).
From French lune, from Latin luna.
Alteration of lyon.
Probably of Romano-British (Latin) origin, such as Old English ea (“river”) Lōn, a phonetic adaptation of Latin Ialonus, a local Celtic god (and thus from Proto-Celtic *yalom (“clearing”)). Or, possibly from lune, referring to the river's shape.