Word.ws English Dictionary

fanwork

fanwork noun: fan tracery.

Noun (1)

fanwork (countable and uncountable, plural fanworks)

  1. Fan tracery.
    • The chapel — a soaring, slender-shafted building, with fanwork upon its roof and an apse deep and pointed — seemed full of light, withal it was hung with black velvet.1911, Maurice Hewlett, The Song of Renny, Charles Scribner's Son, 's (1911), page 389
    • There were bits of a vaulted roof with panelled fanwork and moulded ribs, recalling the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster.2008, Geoffrey Ashe, King Arthur's Avalon: The Story of Glastonbury, Sutton Press, published 2008, →ISBN, page 289
  2. A fan-shaped network of lines or projections.
    • He smiled again, easily, dimples creasing his cheeks, and a tiny fanwork of lines crinkled the corners of his dark eyes.1999, Anne Marie Winston, Lovers' Reunion, Silhouette Books, published 1999, →ISBN
    • The bud vase lay on its side near the bush; a lacy fanwork of roots had spread out over the tabletop, following the path of the spilled water.2006, Kage Baker, The Machine's Child, Tor, published 2007, →ISBN, page 123

Noun (2)

fanwork (countable and uncountable, plural fanworks)

  1. A creative work produced by a fan, based on a book, movie, television show, musical group, etc.
    • William saw Michaela's fanwork of The Powerpuff Girls, her favorite TV show of all time.
    • Fans often declare that they prefer fanon to what actually happens in canon and fanworks to the actual series, which is lackluster by comparison.2008, Tan Bee Kee, “Rewriting Gender and Sexuality in English-Language Yaoi Fanfiction”, in Antonia Levi, Mark McHarry, Dru Pagliassotti, editors, Boys' Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and...

Examples of fanwork in a sentence

  • He had three lines running across his forehead, and a fanwork of them radiating from the corner of each eye.2013, Leigh Evans, The Trouble with Fate, St. Martin's Press, published 2013, →ISBN, page 222:
  • The result is a proliferation of fanworks that explore narratives of transgression as fans play with the permissibility of Supernatural's supernatural world.2009, Emily Turner, "Scary Just Got Sexy: Transgression in Supernatural and Its Fanfiction", in In the Hunt: Unauthorized Essays on...
  • Other factors contributing to the increased interest in dōjinshi and in fanworks were the development of fixed otaku landmarks and the spread of computers.2010, Fan-Yi Lam, “Comic Market: How the World's Biggest Amateur Comic Fair Shaped Japanese Dōjinshi Culture”, in Frenchy Lunning, editor...

Forms of fanwork

pluralfanworks

Origin of fanwork

From fan + work.

Questions about fanwork

What does fanwork mean?
Fanwork means fan tracery.
How do you use fanwork in a sentence?
He had three lines running across his forehead, and a fanwork of them radiating from the corner of each eye.
What part of speech is fanwork?
Fanwork is a noun.
What is the plural of fanwork?
The plural of fanwork is fanworks.

Words near fanwork in the dictionary

  1. fanwear
  2. fanweed
  3. fanwiki
  4. fanwise
  5. Fanwood
  6. fanwork
  7. fanworks
  8. fanworm
  9. fanworms
  10. fanwort
  11. fanworts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fanwork (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “fanwork.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fanwork. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.