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Wiktionary

fey

See also: Fey

English

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WOTD – 14 April 2007

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /feɪ/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Rhymes: -eɪ
  • Homophones: fay

Alternative forms

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Etymology 1

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From Middle English fey (“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.

Adjective

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fey (comparative feyer or more fey, superlative feyest or most fey)

  1. (dialectal, archaic or poetic) About to die; doomed; on the verge of sudden or violent death.
    • 1977, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion:
      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!”
    • 1922, E. R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros:
      Surely the Gods have made him fey, having ordained his destruction and our humbling before these Demons.
  2. (obsolete) Dying; dead.
  3. (chiefly Scotland, Ireland) Possessing second sight, clairvoyance, or clairaudience.
  4. Overrefined, affected.
    • 1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy:
      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.
    • 2006 January 1, Jennifer Drapkin, “Wrestling with Fame”, in Psychology Today‎[1], volume 39, number 1, page 50:
      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.
    • 2009, Robert Cohen, Amateur Barbarians‎[2], Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 16:
      He'd stand at the board making jokes the kids didn't understand, improvising fey little couplets of dactylic verse.
    • 2009 Oct/Nov, Lucius Shepard, “Halloween Town”, in Fantasy and Science Fiction, volume 117, number 3/4, page 129:
      … 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, …
    • 2011, Héctor Tobar, The Barbarian Nurseries, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, →ISBN:
      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.
    • 2012 Apr, “Field Guide: The Club Rules”, in Town and Country:
      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, Jeffery Goldberg, “What's Your Problem”, in The Atlantic Monthly‎[3], retrieved 2012-09-17:
      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.
  5. Strange or otherworldly.
    • 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:
      Gratefully she crooned with them, so inimitably that old Christine Inglis, on her way to early Mass, vowed the girl was fey.
  6. Spellbound.
Derived terms
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Translations
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Etymology 2

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From Middle English faie, fei (“a place or person possessed with magical properties”), from Middle French feie, fee (“fairy", "fae”). More at fairy.

Adjective

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fey (comparative feyer or more fey, superlative feyest or most fey)

  1. Magical or fairylike.
Translations
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Noun

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fey (countable and uncountable, plural fey or feys)

  1. (fiction, mysticism) A fairy.
  2. (construed as plural) Fairy folk collectively.
Synonyms
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Etymology 3

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Noun

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fey

  1. Alternative form of pe (“Semitic letter”)

See also

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Anagrams

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Mapudungun

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Pronoun

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fey (Raguileo spelling)

  1. Third-person singular personal pronoun. he, she, it.

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Mapudungun personal pronouns
singular dual plural
1st person iñche iñchiw iñchiñ
2nd person eymi eymu eymün
3rd person fey feyengu feyengün

Middle English

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Etymology 1

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Inherited from Old English fǣġe, from Proto-West Germanic *faigī, from Proto-Germanic *faigijaz.

Alternative forms

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Pronunciation

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Adjective

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fey

  2. Marked, fated for, or destined for death; doomed.
  3. Approaching or near one's deathbed; about to pass away.
  4. (rare) Tending to cause or leading to death; dangerous.
  5. (rare) Having bad luck; frowned upon by fate or fortune.
  6. (rare) Weak, afflicted, or vulnerable.
Descendants
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  • English: fey, fay
  • Scots: fey
References
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Etymology 2

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Borrowed from Old French feie (modern French foie), from Latin fīcātum.

Alternative forms

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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fey

  2. (rare) The liver as used in cooking.
References
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Scots

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Etymology

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From Middle English fey, from Old English fǣge.

Noun

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fey (plural feys)

  1. a premonition of death

Adjective

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fey

  1. possessing second sight, premonitory

Volapük

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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fey (nominative plural feys)

  1. fairy

Declension

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declension of fey
singular plural
nominative fey feys
genitive feya feyas
dative feye feyes
accusative feyi feyis
vocative 1 o fey! o feys!
predicative 2 feyu feyus
  • 1 status as a case is disputed
  • 2 in later, non-classical Volapük only

Wolof

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Etymology

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Probably from Upper Guinea Creole, from a conflation of Portuguese pagar (“to pay”) and Portuguese apagar (“to extinguish, to turn off”). In that case cognate with Guinea-Bissau Creole paga.

Pronunciation

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Verb

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fey

  1. to pay
  2. to extinguish; to turn off
  3. to respond to a greeting

References

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  • Jean-Léopold Diouf (2003) Dictionnaire wolof-français et français-wolof (in French), France: Éditions Karthala, →ISBN, page 126
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