feign

英文词源

feign

feign: [13] Feign is first cousin to faint. It comes from the present stem of Old French faindre or feindre ‘pretend, shirk’, whose past participle gave English faint. This in turn came from Latin fingere ‘make, shape’, which also gave English effigy, fiction, figure, and figment and is related to English dairy and dough. The semantic progression from ‘make, shape’ to ‘reform or change fraudulently’, and hence ‘pretend’, had already begun in classical Latin times.
=> dairy, dough, effigy, faint, fiction, figure

feign (v.)

A 17c. respelling of fain, fein, from Middle English feinen, feynen "disguise or conceal (deceit, falsehood, one's real meaning); dissemble, make false pretenses, lie; pretend to be" (c. 1300), from Old French feindre "hesitate, falter; be indolent; lack courage; show weakness," also transitive, "to shape, fashion; depict, represent; feign, pretend; imitate" (12c.), from Latin fingere "to touch, handle; devise; fabricate, alter, change" (see fiction).

From late 14c. as "simulate (an action, an emotion, etc.)." Related: Feigned; feigning. The older spelling is that of faint, feint, but this word acquired a -g- in imitation of the French present participle stem feign- and the Latin verb.