fan

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“
He said the only thing he hopes for as a fan is a long series with a lot of action.

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Definitions (62)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (16)

  1. noun A device for creating a current of air or a breeze, especially:
  2. noun A machine using an electric motor to rotate thin, rigid vanes in order to move air, as for cooling.
  3. noun A collapsible, usually wedge-shaped device made of a light material such as silk, paper, or plastic.
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Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (37)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

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Examples (50)

  • She hadn't had time to read the complicated genealogies and financial records of Buridan and its dependents; this fan was her lifeline As she recovered from her migraine in the last day or so, the reconstruction work had caught up and the servants learned where everything was. —  Magazine - Analog Science Fiction and Fact - 2007 - Issue 04 - April
  • An essential element in encounters with a fan was the ability to get away. —  F ;SF - vol 101 issue 02 - August 2001
  • Will. i.am has said that a fan was the one who got close to Hilton during the alleged incident, which occurred after Sunday's MuchMusic Video Awards. —  Toronto Sun
  • I also tryed Ubuntu 8.04 and it worked as well plus the fan was also more silence??? —  PCLinuxOS-Forums
  • The noise from the fan is audible and can get a little irritating at times; especially when the M2400 is parked on the docking station running nothing but the necessary tasks for operating Vista and antivirus software in the background. —  NotebookReview.com - The Webs Best Source For Laptop Notebook Info
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This word has been looked up 141 times.

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Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

player ·  reader ·  one ·  star ·  band ·  student ·  machine ·  box ·  audience ·  hat ·  game ·  magazine

Used in the same contextWord Family

fan:   fans ·  fanned ·  fanning
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (5)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. Middle English, winnowing fan, from Old English fann, from Latin vannus; see wet-1 in Indo-European roots.
  2. Short for fanatic.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (3)

  1. from Middle English fan, fann (for winnowing grain), from Anglo-Saxon fann (for winnowing grain) = Dutch wan = Old High German wanna, Middle High German G. wanne = Swedish vanna, a fan (for winnowing grain), = Italian vanno = Old French van, French van (whence English van, which is thus a doublet of fan), from Latin vannus, a fan (for winnowing grain), orig. *vatnus, akin to Sanskrit vāta, wind, from √ vā, blow. Cf. English wind, and its deriv. winnow, from the same ult. root.
  2. from Middle English fannen, transitive winnow, intransitive flutter, = Dutch wannen = Old High German wannōn, winnow; from the noun.
  3. Said by some to be short for fanatic, but this implies a popular pronunciation fan'a-tic. Others associate the word with fan, which has various slang uses.
 

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