dogvane
dogvane noun: a small vane of bunting, feathers, or other light material, fastened to the end of a short staff and placed on the weather gunwale of a sailing ship to assist the helmsman to judge the direction of the wind.
Noun
dogvane (plural dogvanes)
- A small vane of bunting, feathers, or other light material, fastened to the end of a short staff and placed on the weather gunwale of a sailing ship to assist the helmsman to judge the direction of the wind.
- she had an ugly knack of stopping, and swinging one leg all manner of ways, like a dogvane in a calm.1826, Old Sailor, Greenwich Hospital
- Nor was any mariner surprised when, after inspecting the compass, and then the dog-vane, and then ascertaining the precise bearing of the odor as nearly as possible, Ahab rapidly ordered the ship’s course to be slightly altered, and the sail to be shortened.1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick or the Whale
- A cockade worn on a hat (worn in the British Navy in the 18th and 19th centuries)
Forms of dogvane
| plural | dogvanes |
|---|
Origin of dogvane
From dog + vane.
Questions about dogvane
- What does dogvane mean?
- Dogvane means a small vane of bunting, feathers, or other light material, fastened to the end of a short staff and placed on the weather gunwale of a sailing ship to assist the helmsman to judge the direction of the wind.
- What part of speech is dogvane?
- Dogvane is a noun.
- What is the plural of dogvane?
- The plural of dogvane is dogvanes.
Words near dogvane in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dogvane (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “dogvane.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dogvane. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.