originally underworld argot, of obscure origin
Note:
The verb fake first appears in print in James Hardy Vaux's "A New and Comprehensive Vocabulary of the Flash Language," in vol. 2 of Hardy's Memoirs (London, 1819). The meanings given by Hardy are extremely general: "a word so variously used, that I can only illustrate it by a few examples. To fake any person or place, may signify to rob them; to fake a person, may also imply to shoot, wound, or cut; to fake a man out and out, is to kill him; a man who inflicts wounds upon, or otherwise disfigures, himself, for any sinister purpose, is said to have faked himself…to fake a screeve, is to write a letter, or other paper; to fake a screw, is to shape out a skeleton or false key, for the purpose of screwing a particular place; to fake a cly, is to pick a pocket; etc., etc., etc." (p. 170). However, Hardy also records bit-faking "coining base money" and and both Vaux and the earlier Lexicon Balatronicum (London, 1811, a revision of Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1785) record fakement in the sense "forgery"—so the sense "to simulate, counterfeit" may have been part of its original meaning. Attempts have been made to link fake with earlier argot fegue and (rarely) feak "to beat, whip, wear out, bring about the ruin of" (the latter two senses used in Restoration comedy), though these are somewhat unlikely antecedents phonetically and semantically. Perhaps all these words are part of a family of expressive vocabulary, having counterparts in other Germanic languages, with the consonantal frame f--k/g, as suggested by Anatoly Liberman (OUPblog, August 23, 2017).
