fey

See also: Fey

English

WOTD – 14 April 2007

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /feɪ/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪ
• Homophones: fay

Alternative forms

• fay

Etymology 1

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

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

• feydom

Translations

doomed to die

• Bulgarian: обречен на смърт (obrečen na smǎrt)
• Czech: umírající
• Icelandic: feigur (is) m
• Norwegian: feig (no)
• Russian: обречённый (ru) (obrečónnyj)
• Spanish: destinado a morir
• Swedish: döende (sv), på dödsbädden, moribund (sv), dödsmärkt (sv), dödsdömd (sv)
• Ukrainian: приречений m (pryrečenyj), вмираючий m (vmyrajučyj)

strange or otherworldly

• Bulgarian: странен (bg) (stranen)
• French: détaché du monde
• Russian: не от мира сего (ru) (ne ot mira sevo)
• Spanish: etéreo (es), extraño (es)
• Swedish: egendomlig (sv)
• Ukrainian: дивний m (dyvnyj), неземний m (nezemnyj)

spellbound

• Bulgarian: омагьосан (bg) (omagjosan)
• Catalan: fadat
• French: envoûté (fr)
• Italian: incantato (it)
• Spanish: embelesado (es)
• Swedish: trollbunden (sv), förtrollad (sv)
• Ukrainian: зачарований m (začarovanyj)

Etymology 2

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

Adjective

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

1. Magical or fairylike.

Translations

magical or fairylike

• Bulgarian: магичен (magičen)
• French: magique (fr)
• Italian: magico (it)
• Spanish: mágico (es)
• Swedish: magisk (sv), trolsk (sv)
• Ukrainian: магічний m (mahičnyj), чарівний m (čarivnyj)

Noun

fey (countable and uncountable, plural fey or feys)

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

Synonyms

• See fairy

Etymology 3

Noun

fey

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

See also

• fay
• fae

Anagrams

• Fye, fye

Mapudungun

Pronoun

fey (Raguileo spelling)

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

See also

Mapudungun personal pronouns

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

Middle English

Etymology 1

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

Alternative forms

• feye, fay, faie, veie, veye, faye, fei, vey
• fæie, væie, fæy, feiȝe, vaiȝe, feaye (Early Middle English)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfæi̯(ə)/
• (Southern) IPA^(key): /ˈvæi̯(ə)/
• Rhymes: -æi̯(ə)

Adjective

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

• English: fey, fay
• Scots: fey

References

• “fei(e, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2019-1-3.

Etymology 2

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

Alternative forms

• fee

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfæi̯(ə)/
• Rhymes: -æi̯(ə)

Noun

fey

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

References

• “fei, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2019-1-3.

Scots

Etymology

From Middle English fey, from Old English fǣge.

Noun

fey (plural feys)

1. a premonition of death

Adjective

fey

1. possessing second sight, premonitory

Volapük

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fej/

Noun

fey (nominative plural feys)

1. fairy

Declension

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

Etymology

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

• Audio:

  (file)

Verb

fey

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

References

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