fey
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /feɪ/
rhymes: -eɪ
homophone: fay
Forms: form: feyer
form: more fey
form: feyest
form: most fey
form: fay
form: fae
form: fay
form: fae
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.
Senses: examples: text: Surely the Gods have made him fey, having ordained his destruction and our humbling before these Demons.
ref: 1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, chapter 18, in The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC:
text: 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!”
ref: 1977, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion:
synonyms: word: accursed
word: undone
word: accursed
word: condemned
word: confounded
word: cursed
word: sunk
word: cussed
word: damnable
word: damned
word: dead meat
word: doomed
word: done
word: fey
word: finished
word: ill-fated
word: lost
word: sentenced
word: undone
word: wrecked
glosses: About to die; doomed; on the verge of sudden or violent death.
synonyms: word: lifeless
word: moribund
word: asleep
word: at rest
word: cadaverous
word: clay-cold
word: deceased
word: resting
word: decomposed
word: defunct
word: departed
word: expired
word: extinct
word: fey
word: gone
word: good
word: inanimate
word: inert
word: kaput
word: late
word: lifeless
word: living impaired
word: low
word: no longer with us
word: no more
word: perished
word: reposing
word: six feet deep
word: six feet under
word: stiff
word: wasted
word: whilom
word: with God
glosses: Dying; dead.
synonyms: psychic
second-sighted
sibylline
glosses: Possessing second sight, clairvoyance, or clairaudience.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy:
text: 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.
ref: 2006 January 1, Jennifer Drapkin, “Wrestling with Fame”, in Psychology Today, volume 39, number 1, page 50:
text: He'd stand at the board making jokes the kids didn't understand, improvising fey little couplets of dactylic verse.
ref: 2009, Robert Cohen, Amateur Barbarians, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 16:
text: … 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, …
ref: 2009 Oct/Nov, Lucius Shepard, “Halloween Town”, in Fantasy and Science Fiction, volume 117, number 3/4, page 129:
text: 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.
ref: 2011, Héctor Tobar, The Barbarian Nurseries, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, →ISBN:
text: 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.
ref: 2012 Apr, “Field Guide: The Club Rules”, in Town and Country:
text: 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.
ref: 2012, Jeffery Goldberg, “What's Your Problem”, in The Atlantic Monthly, retrieved 17 Sep 2012:
synonyms: word: effete
word: stagy
word: affected
word: effete
word: fey
word: recherché
word: hoity-toity
word: overrefined
word: pansified
word: precious
word: pretentious
word: smug
word: stagy
word: stilted
word: theatrical
word: Woosterian
glosses: Overrefined, affected.
examples: text: Gratefully she crooned with them, so inimitably that old Christine Inglis, on her way to early Mass, vowed the girl was fey.
ref: 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:
synonyms: ethereal
mystical
supernatural
transcendental
glosses: Strange or otherworldly.
synonyms: enchanted
spellbound
glosses: Spellbound.
Derived terms: feydom
feyly
feyness