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PlainSpell

fey

/feɪ/adjective, noun

fey is an adjective meaning “Possessing second sight, clairvoyance, or clairaudience” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-E-Y and has one syllable, and it appears about once in every 1 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does fey mean?

adjective

  1. 1

    archaicAbout to die; doomed; on the verge of sudden or violent death.

  2. 2

    obsoleteDying; dead.

  3. 3

    IrelandScotlandPossessing second sight, clairvoyance, or clairaudience.

  4. 4

    Overrefined, affected.

  5. 5

    Strange or otherworldly.

  6. 6

    Spellbound.

  7. 7

    Magical or fairylike.

noun

  1. 1

    A fairy.

  2. 2

    Fairy folk collectively.

  3. 3

    Alternative form of pe (“Semitic letter”).

verb

  1. 1

    UKobsoleteTo cleanse.

    to fey a drain or ditch

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce fey?

  • /feɪ/

Fey has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-fey.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of fey

  • feyer comparative
  • more fey comparative
  • feyest superlative
  • most fey superlative
  • feys plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • feying participle, present
  • feyed participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is fey?

Fey appears about once in every 1 million words in written English, the 29,649th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Words people confuse with fey

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

fay vs fey30 G

Sounds like: fay (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).

Also written: pe.

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

Fey in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Spanishdestinado a morir (doomed to die), etéreo, extraño (strange or otherworldly), embelesado (spellbound), mágico (magical or fairylike)
Frenchdétaché du monde (strange or otherworldly), envoûté, ensorcelé (spellbound), magique, féérique (magical or fairylike)
Portuguesefádico (magical or fairylike)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does fey come from?

From Middle English feye (“fated to die”), from Old English fǣġe (“doomed to die, timid”), from Proto-West Germanic *faigī, from Proto-Germanic *faigijaz (“cowardly, wicked”), from Proto-Indo-European *peyk- (“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.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).