feign

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English feinen, also feignen,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French feindre (“to shape; to pretend”), from its present stem feign-,^[5][6][3] from Latin fingō (“to touch, shape, form, invent”),^[4][7][8] from Proto-Indo-European *dheigh- (“to form, build”).^[7][9] In Anglo-Norman the verb is recorded from 1113–19, meaning "to pretend, fabricate, fashion" and also "to lose heart".^[10] The Latin verb also gave fingir and fingere,^[4] and the English words fiction, figment, figure and effigy; it is related to dough and dairy.^[11][4] The past participle of the Old French verb gave faint, and its feminine, feint.^[11][12] The Middle English spelling was fein or fain, and the “g” was added in imitation of the French stem and the Latin verb.^[7][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

To invent a story or an excuse: 1297, in Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle.^[4] Barnhart and Etymonline date the verb about 1300,^[5][7] and the OED records "to fashion, shape" and "to allege falsely" from before 1300, in the Early English Psalter.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Ayto notes that the step from "make, shape" to "alter fraudulently" and hence "pretend" had already begun in classical Latin.^[11] The Middle English senses, taken from Latin, included making something and inventing a story or an excuse, from which came the sense of making a pretence of a feeling.^[13] The sense "to simulate an action or an emotion" is recorded from the late 14th century.^[7] In Middle English feign could also mean to imagine (1377, Langland) and to tell fictions (about 1384, Chaucer).^[4] Chaucer used the verb 41 times and Gower 72 times.^[14] The sense "to fashion, form" survived only as an occasional Latinism.^[4] Johnson (1755) gave "to invent" as the first sense.^[15] A noun feign, pretence, is found about 1320 in the phrase without feign.^[4]

Timeline

• 1297 – to invent a story, an excuse or an accusation; to forge a document.^[4]
• before 1300 – to fashion, shape (now obsolete); to claim falsely.^[4]
• c. 1320 – noun, pretence, in without feign.^[4]
• 1377 – to imagine, picture to oneself, in Langland.^[4]
• c. 1384 – to make fictitious statements, in Chaucer.^[4]
• late 14th century – to simulate an action or an emotion.^[7]
• 17th century – the spelling with g becomes established.^[7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To give a false appearance of; to pretend: He feigned surprise at the news.^[16][17][3]
2. To pretend to be, or represent falsely: She feigned herself asleep.^[16][3]
3. To imitate so as to deceive.^[16][17]
4. To make up; to fabricate (an excuse or a story).^[16][17][4]
5. (archaic) To invent or imagine.^[16][4]
6. To pretend; to dissemble.^[16]

Word family

• feigner
• feigningly
• feigned
• unfeigned

Related words

• faint
• feint
• fiction
• fictitious
• figment
• figure
• effigy
• dough
• dairy

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
11. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
12. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
13. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ a b c d e f The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
17. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins