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feal

/fiːl/adjective, adverb, verb, noun

feal is an adjective meaning “(of things) Cosy; clean; neat” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-E-A-L, and it appears about once in every 21 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does feal mean?

adjective

  1. 1

    ScotlandUK(of things) Cosy; clean; neat.

  2. 2

    ScotlandUK(of persons) Comfortable; cosy; safe.

  3. 3

    ScotlandUKSmooth; soft; downy; velvety.

  4. 4

    archaicFaithful, loyal.

adverb

  1. 1

    In a feal manner.

verb

  1. 1

    To hide.

  2. 2

    obsoleteTo press on, advance.

noun

  1. 1

    Alternative form of fail (“piece of turf cut from grassland”)

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

How do you pronounce feal?

  • /fiːl/

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

Forms of feal

  • fealer comparative
  • more feal comparative
  • fealest superlative
  • most feal superlative
  • feil
  • feel
  • feele
  • fiel
  • feals present, singular, he/she/it, plural
  • fealing participle, present
  • fealed participle, past
  • fale past
  • folen participle, past

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

How common is feal?

Feal appears about once in every 21 million words in written English, the 138,319th 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).

Where does feal come from?

From Middle English fele, fæle (“proper, of the right sort”), from Old English fǣle (“faithful, trusty, good; dear, beloved”), from Proto-West Germanic *failī, from Proto-Germanic *failijaz (“true, friendly, familiar, good”), from Proto-Indo-European *pey- (“to adore”). Cognate with Scots feel, feelie (“cosy, neat, clean, comfortable”), West Frisian feilich (“safe”), Dutch veil (“for-sale”), Dutch veilig (“safe”), German feil (“for-sale”), Latin pīus (“good, dutiful, faithful, devout, pious”).

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