Noun

(en noun)

The male ruler of a barony.

A male member of the lowest rank of British nobility.

A particular cut of beef, made up of a double sirloin.

* 1851 , (Herman Melville), (Moby-Dick) ,

Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly quarried out of the solid ox.

A person of great power in society, especially in business and politics.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist), author=Lexington

, title= Keeping the mighty honest , passage=British journalists shun complete respectability, feeling a duty to be ready to savage the mighty, or rummage through their bins. Elsewhere in Europe, government contracts and subsidies ensure that press barons will only defy the mighty so far.}}

(legal, obsolete) A husband.

baron and feme: husband and wife

Noun

(en noun)

(historical) A rank of nobility in pre-Norman England, roughly equivalent to baron." thane]", entry in 1852', ''Putnam's Home Cyclopedia: Hand-Book of Literature and the Fine Arts'', p594 — The '''thanes''' in England were formerly persons of some dignity; there were two orders, the king's '''thanes''', who attended the kings in their courts and held lands immediately of them, and the ordinary '''thanes , who were lords of manors and who had particular jurisdiction within their limits.After the [Norman Conquest, this title was disused, and ''baron took its place.

* 1845 , (translator), A History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings , 2004, page 317,

The Anglo-Saxon thanes were in all respects the predecessors of the Norman barons.

The title of thane seems to have supplanted that of gesith, which appears only in the earner Anglo-Saxon laws, a denomination that may originally have designated the attendants or companions of the king, and whose wergild being triple that of the simple freeman, were, therefore, denominated not only gesithcund men, but six-hynde men.

* 1910 , Robert A. Thompson, The People's History of England , Walter Scott Publishing, New York,

The little island of Iona became the refuge of the sons and some thanes of Athelfrith, banished by Edwin.

* 2000 , '', ''Anglo-Saxon Spirituality: Selected Writings , page 144,

Although some serfs escape from their lord and turn away from Christendom to the Vikings and after this it happens that the clash of swords becomes common to thane' and serf, if the serf utterly kills the ' thane , he lies unpaid by all of the serf's kin.