''feign'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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Primary

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''feign'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20250825004828-00-⌔

feign - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Verb

feign (third-person singular simple present feigns, present participle feigning, simple past and past participle feigned)

• To make a false show or pretence of; to counterfeit or simulate.
  • ✤ The pupil feigned sickness on the day of his exam.
  • ✤ They feigned her signature on the cheque.
  • ✤ [T]he truest poetry is the most
    feigning, and lovers are given to poetry, and what
    they swear in poetry may be said as lovers they do
    feign.¹
  • ✤ She had not been much of a dissembler, until now her loneliness taught her to feign.²
• To imagine; to invent; to pretend to do something.
  • ✤ He feigned that he had gone home at the appointed time.
  • ✤ Then I sent unto him, saying, There are no such things done as thou sayest, but thou feignest them out of thine own heart.³
• To make an action as if doing one thing, but actually doing another, for example to trick an opponent; to feint.
  • ✤ Cahill was beaten far too easily for Miller’s goal, although the striker deserves the credit for the way he controlled Alan Hutton’s right-wing delivery, with his back to goal, feigned to his left then went the other way and pinged a splendid left-foot shot into Hart’s bottom right-hand corner.⁴

Etymology

From Middle English feynen, feinen,⁵ borrowed from Old French feindre (“to pretend”), from Latin fingere (“to form, shape, invent”). Compare French feignant (present participle of feindre, literally “feigning”). Also compare feint, figment and fiction.

Pronunciation

• IPA: /feɪn/
• Audio (US): 🔊
• Audio (US): 🔊
• Rhymes: -eɪn
• Homophones: fane, foehn, fain

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

1. 1599, William Shakespeare, As You Like It, III.iii.18-21: ↩

2. 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 2, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC: ↩

3. 1611, King James Translators, Nehemiah 6:8: ↩

4. 14 August 2013, Daniel Taylor, “Rickie Lambert’s debut goal gives England victory over Scotland”, in The Guardian ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩

5. Douglas Harper (2001–2026), “feign”, in Online Etymology Dictionary. ↩

Link to original

Secondary

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