plush velvet; breakdown (state of no longer functioning); purlin
“J’ai ainsi vécu seul, sans personne avec qui parler véritablement, jusqu’à une panne dans le désert du Sahara, il y a six ans. Quelque chose s’était cassé dans mon moteur. Et comme je n'avais avec moi ni mécanicien, ni passagers, je me préparai à essayer de réussir, tout seul, une réparation difficile.” — So I lived alone, with no one to really talk to, until my plane broke down in the Sahara Desert six years prior. Something had broken in my engine. And since I had neither a mechanic nor any passengers with me, I was about to make the difficult repair all by myself.
From Middle French panne, from Old French penne (“fur, especially for lining garments”), from Latin pinna (“feather”). The semantic trajectory was possibly influenced by a Frankish term with the same double-sense as Middle High German vëder (“fur; feather”).