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Fan

.

I could brain him with his lady’s fan (1 Henry IV., ii. 3)—i.e. knock his brains out with a fan handle. The ancient fans had long handles, so that ladies used their fans for walking-sticks, and it was by no means unusual for very testy dames to chastise unruly children by beating them with their fansticks.

“Werʹt not better

Your head were broken with the handle of a fan?”

Beaumont and Fletcher: Wit at Several Weapons, v.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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