fey

adjective \ ˈfā \

Updated on: 19 Apr 2018

Definition of fey

1 a chiefly Scotland : fated to die : doomed

b : marked by a foreboding of death or calamity

another and lesser man … gave a fey lonely warning
—Hodding Carter

2 a : able to see into the future : visionary

Not being fey, he never suspected what it would lead to.

b : marked by an otherworldly air or attitude

she had that half shy, half fey smile and that birdlike perkiness
—A. G. Ogden

c : crazy, touched

3 a : excessively refined : precious

a fey, self-indulgent dandy

b : quaintly unconventional : campy

… audiences howl at her off-center delivery of fey folk songs and quaint special material.
—Howard Teichmann

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feyly

adverb

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feyness

noun

fey was our Word of the Day on 05/01/2017. Hear the podcast!

Recent Examples of fey from the Web

Barnatan’s playing bordered on being too precious for my tastes, a fey hyper-expressivity that traded concern for Schubert’s architecture with Barnatan’s delight in magnifying the details.

— christian hertzog, sandiegouniontribune.com, "In his San Diego debut, tenor Robin Tritschler captivates audience in La Jolla Music Society concert," 15 Apr. 2018
Pacino's Herod, who's married to Herodias (a steely Hart), Salomé's mother and the widow of the king's brother, is a singular creation: playful, taunting, persuasive, a bit fey.

— gary goldstein, latimes.com, "Al Pacino interprets Oscar Wilde in companion pieces 'Wilde Salomé' and 'Salomé'," 29 Mar. 2018
Many of those bad singers at whom the show paused to laugh tended to be fey men.

— daniel d'addario, Time, "American Idol 2.0 Is Kinder and Cuddlier. Will It Still Be a Hit?," 1 Mar. 2018
Polish aristocrats, fey and useless, were endowed with black hair and eyes.

— timothy snyder, Slate Magazine, "Hitler’s American Dream," 8 Mar. 2017
The best such musicals are a bit outré, a bit funky, a bit too fey or fine to survive in their own time, and maybe even in ours.

— jesse green, New York Times, "Review: A Game Effort at Polishing Up ‘The Golden Apple’," 11 May 2017
These fragmented men and women, plus a fey 9-year-old named Hedwig, share not only the same body and addled brain, but the same compulsion to rattle on menacingly, incessantly...

— joe morgenstern, WSJ, "‘Split’ Review: Many Personas, No Personality," 19 Jan. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'fey.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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.

Origin and Etymology of fey

Middle English feye, from Old English fǣge; akin to Old High German feigi doomed and perhaps to Old English fāh hostile, outlawed — more at foe

NEW! Time Traveler

First Known Use: before 12th century

See Words from the same year