fan
noun · verb
Simple meaning
A hand-held device made up of concertinaed material, or slats of material, gathered together at one end.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
fanIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈfæn
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A hand-held device consisting of concertinaed material, or slats of material, gathered together at one end, that may be opened out into the shape of a sector of a circle and waved back and forth in order to move air towards oneself and cool oneself.
An electrical or mechanical device for moving air, used for cooling people, machinery, etc.
Anything resembling a hand-held fan in shape, e.g., a peacock's tail.
The action of fanning; agitation of the air.
An instrument for winnowing grain, by moving which the grain is tossed and agitated, and the chaff is separated and blown away.
A small vane or sail, used to keep the large sails of a smock mill always in the direction of the wind.
verb
Blow away or off with a current of air
Agitate the air
transitive
To blow air on (something) by means of a fan (hand-held, mechanical or electrical) or otherwise.
intransitiveusually to fan out
To move or spread in multiple directions from one point, in the shape of a hand-held fan.
transitive
To dispel by waving a hand-held fan.
To winnow grain.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- General English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A hand-held device consisting of concertinaed material, or slats of material, gathered together at one end, that may be opened out into the shape of a sector of a circle and waved back and forth in order to move air towards oneself and cool oneself.
Used this way, fan is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use fan
- “I am a big fan of this band; their new album is incredible.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: hand-held device consisting of concertinaed material
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.