fey en · ADJ · etymology 1
Pronunciation
- (US) audio
- /feɪ/
Etymology
From Middle English feye (“fated to die”), from Old English fǣġe (“doomed to die, timid”), from Proto-West Germanic *faigī, from Proto-Germanic *faigijaz (“cowardly, wicked”), from Proto-Indo-European *peyk- (“ill-meaning, bad”). Akin to Old Saxon fēgi, whence Dutch veeg (“doomed, near death”), Old High German feigi (“appointed for death, ungodly”) whence German feige (“cowardly”), Old Norse feigr (“doomed”) whence the Icelandic feigur (“doomed to die”), Old English fāh (“outlawed, hostile”). More at foe.
Meanings
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(archaic, dialectal, poetic) About to die; doomed; on the verge of sudden or violent death.
Then Fëanor laughed as one fey, and he cried: “None and none! What I have left behind I count now no loss; needless baggage on the road it has proved. Let those that cursed my name, curse me still, and whine their way back to the cages of the Valar! Let the ships burn!”
1977, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion:Surely the Gods have made him fey, having ordained his destruction and our humbling before these Demons.
1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, chapter 18, in The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC:
- (obsolete) Dying; dead.
- (Ireland, Scotland) Possessing second sight, clairvoyance, or clairaudience.
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Overrefined, affected.
Hoffman does not rely on his talent to carry him through a role. He spent five and a half months transmuting himself into Capote. … He lost 40 pounds and practiced the inscrutable voice and fey mannerisms for an hour or two every day.
2006 January 1, Jennifer Drapkin, “Wrestling with Fame”, in Psychology Today, volume 39, number 1, page 50:Guadalupe was a fey mexicana with long braids and a taste for embroidered Oaxacan blouses and overwrought indigenous jewelry, and also a former university student like Araceli.
2011, Héctor Tobar, The Barbarian Nurseries, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, →ISBN:Most Ivy League graduates are unaccustomed to pepper spray; perhaps he should spray himself in the face once or twice, to test his tolerance. He should also resist the urge to bring high-end camping equipment to protests—this will make him look fey and elitist.
2012, Jeffery Goldberg, “What's Your Problem”, in The Atlantic Monthly, retrieved 17 Sep 2012:His interlocutor was whimsical if not downright fey. He pushed his spectacles to the top of his nose. He shoved them into his greying locks like an effeminate racing driver. He gave Pym sherry and put a hand on his backside in order to propel him to a long window that gave on to a row of council houses.
1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy:He'd stand at the board making jokes the kids didn't understand, improvising fey little couplets of dactylic verse.
2009, Robert Cohen, Amateur Barbarians, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 16:… he did not tell Mary Alonso, who had taken Dell's place as a source of gossip and information, and with whom he went out for drinks on occasion, usually along with Mary's partner, Roberta, a fey, freckly, dark-haired girl, …
2009 Oct/Nov, Lucius Shepard, “Halloween Town”, in Fantasy and Science Fiction, volume 117, number 3/4, page 129:Bespoke designer Kirk Miller, who offers a contemporary version at his Soho atelier, says, "A club collar shows that a man pays attention to detail. It's a simple way to communicate elegance." And please don't call it a Peter Pan, the club's fey sister.
2012 Apr, “Field Guide: The Club Rules”, in Town and Country:
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Strange or otherworldly.
Local opinion held Mr. Underwood to be an intense, profane little man, whose father in a fey fit of humor christened Braxton Bragg, a name Mr. Underwood had done his best to live down.
1960 July 11, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa.; New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC:Neither are good looks any criterion; and vulgarity, or at least what a given community terms so, does not necessarily impair certain mysterious characteristics, the fey grace, the elusive, shifty, soul-shattering, insidious charm that separates the nymphet from such coevals of hers as are incomparably more dependent on the spatial world of synchronous phenomena than on that intangible island of entranced time where Lolita plays with her likes.
1955, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, published August 1958, →OCLC:Gratefully she crooned with them, so inimitably that old Christine Inglis, on her way to early Mass, vowed the girl was fey.
1907, Barbara Baynton, edited by Sally Krimmer and Alan Lawson, Human Toll (Portable Australian Authors: Barbara Baynton), St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, published 1980, page 186:
- Spellbound.
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| feyest | Degree=Sup | lexicographic | |
| more fey | Degree=Cmp | lexicographic | |
| feyer | Degree=Cmp | lexicographic | |
| most fey | Degree=Sup | lexicographic |
Deriveds
Synonyms
accursed · stagy · unalive · inert · pansified · smug · expired · undone · breathless · low · cold · second-sighted · no longer with us · cursed · mystical · fey · finished · stagy · undone · moribund · unalived · lifeless · cadaverous · decomposed · resting · sentenced · pretentious · doomed · wasted · ill-fated · precious · perished · damned · effete · effete · psychic · defunct · stilted · dead meat · stiff · accursed · inanimate · enchanted · hoity-toity · whilom · with God · condemned · living impaired · sunk · theatrical · lost · ethereal · six feet deep · sibylline · affected · no more · six feet under · killed · recherché · overrefined · fey · star-crossed · clay-cold · Woosterian · late · lifeless · supernatural · extinct · departed · fey · gone · kaput · cussed · deceased · spellbound · transcendental · reposing · at rest · done · blessed · asleep · good
Translations (30)
it incantato (spellbound) · uk зачарований (spellbound) · fr envoûté (spellbound) · sv förtrollad (spellbound) · sv trollbunden (spellbound) · bg обречен на смърт (doomed to die) · sv egendomlig (strange or otherworldly) · uk приречений (doomed to die) · cs umírající (doomed to die) · ru обречённый (doomed to die) · sv dödsmärkt (doomed to die) · es embelesado (spellbound) · sv dödsdömd (doomed to die) · uk дивний (strange or otherworldly) · ru не от мира сего (strange or otherworldly) · es etéreo (strange or otherworldly) · fr détaché du monde (strange or otherworldly) · fr ensorcelé (spellbound) · sv på dödsbädden (doomed to die) · uk неземний (strange or otherworldly) · ca fadat (spellbound) · bg омагьосан (spellbound) · es extraño (strange or otherworldly) · es destinado a morir (doomed to die) · is feigur (doomed to die) · bg странен (strange or otherworldly) · sv döende (doomed to die) · sv moribund (doomed to die) · uk вмираючий (doomed to die) · no feig (doomed to die)