FAN, a machine employed to produce coolness by agitating the air. That the use of the fan was known to the ancients is very evident from what Terence says:
Cape hoc fabellum, et ventulum huic sic facito;
and also from the words of Ovid,
Profuit et tenues ventos movisse fabello.
The fans of the ancients were made of various materials; but the most elegant were composed of peacocks' feathers, or perhaps painted so as to represent these.
In the Greek church, a fan is put into the hands of the deacons in the ceremony of their ordination, in allusion to a part of the deacon's office in that church, which is to keep the flies off the priests during the celebration of the sacrament.
What is called a fan amongst us is a thin skin, or piece of paper, taffety, or other light stuff, cut semicircularly, and mounted on several little sticks of wood, ivory, tortoise-shell, or the like.
FAN is also an instrument used to winnow corn. The machine employed for this purpose by the ancients seems to have been of a form similar to ours. The fan, which Virgil calls mystica vannus Inachi, was used at initiations into the mysteries of the ancients. For as the persons who were initiated into any of the mysteries required to be particularly good, the instrument which separates the wheat from the chaff was a fit emblem of setting apart the good and virtuous from the vicious and useless part of mankind.