Word of the Day

: November 9, 2011

fey

adjective FAY

What It Means

1 : marked by a foreboding of death or calamity

2 a : marked by an otherworldly air or attitude

b : crazy

3 a : excessively refined : precious

b : quaintly unconventional : campy

fey in Context

Grandfather always said grandmother was "fey," and he often joked that he believed she was raised by woodland fairies.

"The Danny Elfman score is augmented, somehow appropriately for a twee story, by songs from the ultra-fey Sufjan Stevens." -- From a film review by Malcolm Fraser in the Montreal Mirror, September 29, 2011

Did You Know?

"Fey" is a word that defies its own meaning, since it has yet to even come close to the brink of death after being in our language for well over 800 years. In Old and Middle English it meant "feeble" or "sickly." Those meanings turned out to be fey themselves, but the word lived on in senses related to death, and because a wild or elated state of mind was once believed to portend death, other senses arose from these. The word "fay," meaning "fairy" or "elf," may also have had an influence on some senses of "fey." Not until the late 20th century did the word's most recent meanings, "precious" and "campy," find their way onto the pages of the dictionary.