Also (7 yawning), 8 auning. [A word of obscure origin, apparently at first only in nautical use. Probably to be referred (as by Wedgwood) to Fr. auvent ‘a penthouse of cloth, etc. before a shop window, etc.’ Cotgr., early plurals in Littré auvens, auvans, med.L. auvanna, auvannus, whence *auvan, *auwn, awn; the termination is of course Eng. -ING. E. Müller refers it to Low German havenung, f. haven harbor, in sense of ‘a shelter from wind and weather’; Skeat compares ‘Pers. áwan, áwang, anything suspended, awangān hanging, awnang a clothes-line’; but neither of these is applied in its own language to an awning; in particular an oriental origin seems incompatible with the history. F. auvent is itself of doubtful etymol. See Diez, Littré, Du Cange.]
1. A roof-like covering of canvas or similar material, used as a shelter from sun, rain, etc.; esp. above the deck of a vessel.
1624. Capt. Smith, Virginia, in Harper’s Mag., April (1884), 712/1. Wee did hang an awning (which is an old saile) to … trees to shadow us from the Sunne. Ibid. (1626), Accid. Yng. Seamen, 30. A trar-pawling or yawning. Ibid. (1627), Seaman’s Gram., vi. 27. An Awning … is but the bots saile … brought ouer the yard and stay, and boumed out with the boat hooke.
1725. Bradley, Fam. Dict., s.v. Orange tree, An Awning of Bass-Mats … will … keep the Sun and Winds from the Orange Trees.
1877. A. B. Edwards, Up Nile, vi. 135. Too hot on deck without the awning.
2. transf. a. Naut. That part of the poop-deck which is continued forward beyond the bulk-head of the cabin; hence awning-deck(ed. b. gen. A shelter.
1764. Veitch, in Phil. Trans., LIV. 292. The auning, which is a projection of the deck of the cabin to shelter from the sun or rain.
1826. H. N. Coleridge, West Indies, 206. An alley of the graceful bamboo … which might serve for a temporary awning.
1869. Sir E. Reed, Ship Build., xv. 294. These ships … have a complete spar deck … and an awning-deck above this.
1879. H. F. Craggs, in Daily News, 19 April, 3/3. I think all ocean steamers should be either spar-decked, or, better still, awning-decked fore and aft.
Hence Awninged ppl. a. [see -ED2], furnished with an awning; (with awninged off cf. railed off.) Awiningless a., without awning.
1881. Ethel Coxon, A Basil Plant, I. 78. Mr. Trench found himself before the awninged door of big red-bricked house in Kensington.
1881. H. W. Nicholson, From Sword to Share, xxiv. 174. A small portion—over the propeller—is awninged off for the use of first-class (?) passengers.
1865. Miss Braddon, Only a Clod, xxxiii. 267. In an awningless boat under a broiling sun.
