faint

faint · adjective, noun¹

1. Latinfingere
2. Old Frenchfaindre /feindre
3. Old Frenchfaint /feint
4. Middle Englishfaynt /feynt
5. English todayfaint

From Middle English faynt, feynt (“weak; feeble”), from Old French faint, feint (“feigned; negligent; sluggish”), past participle of feindre, faindre (“to feign; sham; work negligently”), from Latin fingere (“to touch, handle, form, shape, frame, form in thought, imagine, conceive, contrive, devise, feign”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeyǵʰ- (“to mold”). Cognate with feign and fiction and more distantly dough.

faint · verb²

1. Middle English · inherited fromfeynen
2. English todayfaint

From Middle English feynen, from the adjective (see above).

Words from the same roots