fey
/feɪ/
fey adjective: about to die; doomed; on the verge of sudden or violent death. Also the alternative form of pe.
Adjective (1)
fey (comparative feyer or more fey, superlative feyest or most fey)
- About to die; doomed; on the verge of sudden or violent death.
- Surely the Gods have made him fey, having ordained his destruction and our humbling before these Demons.1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, chapter 18, in The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC
- 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!”1977, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion
- Dying; dead.
- Synonyms:
- lifeless, moribund, asleep, at rest, blessed, cadaverous, clay-cold, deceased, breathless, resting
- Possessing second sight, clairvoyance, or clairaudience.
- Synonyms:
- psychic, second-sighted, sibylline
- Overrefined, affected.
- 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...1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy
- 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.2006 January 1, Jennifer Drapkin, “Wrestling with Fame”, in Psychology Today, volume 39, number 1, page 50
- Synonyms:
- effete, stagy, affected, recherché, hoity-toity, overrefined, pansified, precious, pretentious, smug
- Strange or otherworldly.
- Gratefully she crooned with them, so inimitably that old Christine Inglis, on her way to early Mass, vowed the girl was fey.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
- Neither are good looks any criterion; and vulgarity, or at least what a given community terms so, does not necessarily impair certain mysterious characteristics, the fey grace, the elusive, shifty, soul-shattering, insidious charm that separates the nymphet from such coevals of hers as are...1955, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, published August 1958, →OCLC
- Synonyms:
- ethereal, mystical, supernatural, transcendental
- Spellbound.
- Synonyms:
- enchanted, spellbound
Adjective (2)
fey (comparative feyer or more fey, superlative feyest or most fey)
- Magical or fairylike.
Noun
fey (countable and uncountable, plural fey or feys)
Verb
fey (third-person singular simple present feys, present participle feying, simple past and past participle feyed)
- To cleanse.
- to fey a drain or ditch
Proper noun capitalized: Fey
Fey (plural Feys)
- A surname.
Also used as
fey is also the alternative form of pe.
fey meaning in Malayalam
fey in Malayalam
- ഫെയ്
Examples of fey in a sentence
- His interlocutor was whimsical if not downright fey.1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy:
- He'd stand at the board making jokes the kids didn't understand, improvising fey little couplets of dactylic verse.2009, Robert Cohen, Amateur Barbarians, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 16:
- 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.2011, Héctor Tobar, The Barbarian Nurseries, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, →ISBN:
- It's a simple way to communicate elegance." And please don't call it a Peter Pan, the club's fey sister.2012 Apr, “Field Guide: The Club Rules”, in Town and Country:
Synonyms of fey
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of fey
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | feyer |
| comparative | more fey |
| superlative | feyest |
| superlative | most fey |
| Noun | |
| plural | fey |
| plural | feys |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | feys |
| present participle | feying |
| past participle | feyed |
| past | feyed |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Feys |
Origin of fey
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.
From Middle English faie, fei (“a place or person possessed with magical properties”), from Middle French feie, fee (“fairy", "fae”), from Old French fae, from Medieval Latin fāda. More at fairy.
Inherited from Middle English feien (“to cleanse”), from Old Norse fægja (“to cleanse, polish”), from Proto-Germanic *fēgijaną (“to decorate, make beautiful”), from Proto-Indo-European *pōḱ-, *pēḱ- (“to clean, adorn”). Cognate with Swedish feja (“to sweep”), Danish feje (“to sweep”), German fegen (“to cleanse, scour, sweep”), Dutch vegen (“to sweep, strike”). More at feague, fake, fair.
Words formed from fey
Words that rhyme with fey
Questions about fey
- What does fey mean?
- Fey means about to die; doomed; on the verge of sudden or violent death.
- What is fey in Malayalam?
- Fey in Malayalam is ഫെയ്. See Fey meaning in Malayalam.
- How do you use fey in a sentence?
- His interlocutor was whimsical if not downright fey.
- What part of speech is fey?
- Fey can be an adjective, a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce fey?
- Fey is pronounced /feɪ/.
Words near fey in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: fey (page history and authors); Fey (page history and authors); fey (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-fey.ogg.
Cite this entry: “fey.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fey. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.