Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Overrefined, exaggerated, or affected.
  • adjective Effeminate.
  • adjective Having or displaying an otherworldly, magical, or fairylike aspect or quality.
  • adjective Having visionary power; clairvoyant.
  • adjective Appearing touched or crazy, as if under a spell.
  • adjective Fated to die soon.
  • adjective Full of the sense of approaching death.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • An obsolete form of fay.
  • Same as fay.
  • See fay.
  • noun A Middle English form of fay.
  • noun An obsolete form of fee.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete Faith.
  • adjective Old Eng. & Scot. Fated; doomed.
  • transitive verb obsolete To cleanse; to clean out.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Magical or fairylike.
  • adjective Strange or otherworldly.
  • adjective Spellbound.
  • adjective About to die; fated; doomed; on the verge of sudden or violent death.
  • adjective obsolete Dying; dead.
  • adjective overrefined, precious; quaint, cute
  • noun Fairy folk collectively.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective slightly insane
  • adjective suggestive of an elf in strangeness and otherworldliness

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English feie, fated to die, from Old English fǣge.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English fey ("fated to die"), from Old English fǣge ("doomed to die, timid"), from Proto-Germanic *faigijaz (“cowardly, wicked”), from Proto-Indo-European *pAik-, *pAig- (“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.

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Examples

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  • (adj): fated to die soon (archaic)

    August 20, 2009

  • President John F. Kennedy described his wife Jacqueline as being "fey."

    April 10, 2017