Lune

Pronunciation

• IPA: /luːn/

From Latin luna ("moon").

Full definition of lune

Noun

1. (obsolete) A fit of lunacy or madness; a period of frenzy; a crazy or unreasonable freak
• 1623, w, The Winter's Tale, These dangerous, unsafe lunes i' the king.

From French lune, from Latin luna.

Noun

1. 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
• 1984, Thomas Pynchon, Slow Learner, 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.
2. Anything crescent-shaped

Usage notes

The corresponding convex shape is sometimes called a lune, but is, strictly, a lens.

Related terms

• lunar
• lunatic
• lunacy

Alteration of lyon.

Noun

1. (hawking) A leash for a hawk
• 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, than he was ware of a faucon com over his hede fleyng towarde an hyghe elme, and longe lunes aboute her feete.