fanlight

From fan + light (“window”).

fanlight (plural fanlights)

1. (architecture) A semicircular or semioval window over a door or other window, normally having a fan-like structure of ribs; sometimes hinged to the transom.

   Hypernym: transom window

   • 1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC:

     One house, however, second from the corner, was still occupied entire; and at the door of this, which wore a great air of wealth and comfort, though it was now plunged in darkness except for the fanlight, Mr. Utterson stopped and knocked. A well-dressed, elderly servant opened the door.

   • 1920, Frank Cousins, Phil M. Riley, The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia‎^[1], Boston: Little, Brown, and Company:

     Flutings also adorn the short architraves each side of the fanlight, and the abacus of the pilaster columns which is carried across a supplementary lintel in front of the lintel proper, the latter being several inches to the rear because of the deeply recessed arrangement of the door.

   • 1960, John Updike, Rabbit, Run, page 65:

     This street is Summer. Faces of brick run together to make a single block-long face. The house numbers are set in fanlights of stained glass above the doors.

   • 1982, John Banville, The Newton Letter:

     It turned out to be a big gloomy pile with ivy and peeling walls and a smashed fanlight over the door, the kind of place where you picture a mad stepdaughter locked up in the attic.

2. An electric fan, usually a ceiling fan, that is also a light fixture.