lune

plural lunes

1. obsoleteA fit of lunacy or madness; a period of frenzy; a crazy or unreasonable freak.

   Why woman, your husband is in his olde Lunes againe: […]

   c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii], page 54, column 1

   2 more examples

   Theſe dangerous, vnſafe Lunes i'th' King, beſhrew them: / He muſt be told on't, and he ſhall[…]

   c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii], page 283, column 2

   A mad world this, my friends, a world in its lunes, petty and other; in lunes other than petty now for some time; in petty-lunes, pettilettes, or pantalettes, about these six weeks, ever since when this rampant androgynous Bloomerism first came over from Yankee land.

   1851 July–December, Thomas Snarlyle, “Bloomerism: A Latter-Day Fragment”, in Punch, volume XXI, page 217

plural lunes

1. geometryA 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.

   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.

   1984, Thomas Pynchon, Slow Learner

2. Anything crescent-shaped.

plural lunes

1. falconryA leash for a hawk.

   1 more example

   And thenne was he ware of a Faucon came fleynge ouer his hede toward an hyghe elme / and longe lunys aboute her feet / and she flewe vnto the elme to take her perche / the lunys ouer cast aboute a bough / And whanne she wold haue taken her flyghte / she henge by the legges fast / and syre launcelot sawe how he henge

   1485, Sir Thomas Malory, “xvj”, in Le Morte Darthur, book VI

1. A river in Cumbria and Lancashire, England, which passes Lancaster.