fey
/feɪ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 2.98 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
adj
adj
Strange or otherworldly.
adj
Example Sentences
- "Surely the Gods have made him fey, having ordained his destruction and our humbling before these Demons."
- "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!”"
- "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."
- "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."
- "He'd stand at the board making jokes the kids didn't understand, improvising fey little couplets of dactylic verse."
- "… 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, …"
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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *peyḱ-, feye, fǣġe, *faigī, *faigijaz, *peyk-
Usage
Inflected Forms
feyer (comparative)
more fey (comparative)
feyest (superlative)
most fey (superlative)
feys (plural)
feys (present, singular)
feying (participle, present)
feyed (participle, past)
feyed (past)