fey

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English feie, also feye and fay,^[2] inherited from Old English fǣge (“fated to die, doomed”),^{[3][4][2][5][6]} which also meant "accursed" and "feeble, timid".^[7][8] Etymonline allows that Old Norse feigr may have contributed.^[8] The Old English adjective is a common Germanic word,^[3] cognate with Old Saxon fēgi,^[3][2] Old Frisian fai,^[8][9] Middle Dutch vēge, now veeg (“about to die”),^[3][9][6] Old High German feigi,^[3][10] Middle High German veige (“doomed; timid, cowardly”), whence feige (“cowardly”),^[3][8] and with the Old Norse word;^[3][10] all go back to Proto-Germanic *faigijaz.^[1][8] The OED writes the Germanic form *faigjo- and calls the further etymology uncertain.^[3] Merriam-Webster Unabridged and Etymonline relate it to Old English fāh (“hostile, outlawed”), the source of foe;^[2][8][11] Klein traces both to a base Proto-Indo-European *peik- (“evil-minded, treacherous, hostile”),^[9] and Köbler's Germanic dictionary to Pokorny's *peiǵ- (“hostile, evil”).^[12] Weekley compared Latin piger (“sluggish”).^[13]

Earliest recorded meaning

Fated to die, doomed to death, or already dying: Old English, first in Beowulf.^[3][7] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates its first known use to before the 12th century.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Old English used the word not only of a warrior doomed to fall but also for "dead, slain", "accursed, damned" and "feeble, timid";^[7] the last two senses died out in English by 1522,^[3][14] while the German cognate kept the sense "cowardly".^[3][8] From 1488 to 1799 Scots writers also used it for what leads to or foretells death.^[3] The word survived mainly in Scotland: the OED calls the sense "doomed to die" archaic in literary English but still in popular Scottish use.^[3] The English Dialect Dictionary records it in Scotland, Ireland, Northumberland and Cumberland, also spelled fay, fie and fye, for "fated to die, predestined to death or calamity" and also for "frenzied, mad";^[15] Scott wrote in 1815 that the common people called by this word the wild high spirits they took as a sign of coming death.^[15] North-east Scottish folklore had signs of a fey person in the house: if the soap would not lather in the washing, a fey person's clothes were in the tub.^[15] From 1823 the OED records the sense "disordered in mind like one about to die", which shades into "having magical, fairylike or unearthly qualities".^[3][14] The American Heritage Dictionary suggests that this familiar sense arose partly because fey sounds like fay, "fairy", a word from Old French fae that goes back to Latin fātum (“fate”).^[16] The OED adds that the word is now often used ironically for "affected" or whimsical,^[3] which Etymonline sees as growing out of the unearthly and the disordered senses.^[8]

Timeline

• Old English – fated to die, doomed; at the point of death.^[3][7]
• Old English – accursed, unlucky; also feeble, timid (both obsolete by 1522).^[3][7]
• 1488 – leading to or foretelling death, deadly (obsolete by 1799), in Hary's Wallace.^[3][14]
• 1823 – disordered in mind like one about to die; magical, fairylike, unearthly, in Galt.^[3][14]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Having an otherworldly, magical or fairylike quality: a fey light over the moor.^[17][18][3]
2. Having visionary powers; clairvoyant.^[17][18]
3. Seeming slightly mad or touched, as if under a spell.^[17][2]
4. Whimsical or strange in a self-conscious way; affected.^[19][3][8]
5. (chiefly Scottish) Fated to die; doomed.^[2][18][3]
6. (chiefly Scottish) In a wild, excited or elated state, formerly thought to be a sign of approaching death.^[18][2][15]
7. (obsolete, Old English–1522) Accursed, unlucky.^[3][7]
8. (obsolete, Old English–1522) Feeble, timid.^[3][7]

Word family

• feyly
• feyness

Related words

• foe
• fay

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
11. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
12. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
13. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
14. ^ a b c d Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
15. ^ a b c d Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
16. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
17. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
18. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
19. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House