FAINT
What does "FAINT" mean?
Lacking strength, brightness, or clarity; barely perceptible.
Meanings
- Not clearly seen, heard, or felt; weak or dim. There was a faint smell of smoke in the hall.
- To lose consciousness briefly because of low blood flow to the brain. She fainted in the heat of the crowded room.
- Feeling weak, dizzy, or close to losing consciousness. I felt faint after giving blood.
- A sudden brief loss of consciousness; a swoon. He fell to the floor in a dead faint.
Did you know?
- 'Faint' and 'feign' come from the same Latin root 'fingere' (to shape, pretend): the original sense was a shirker who 'feigned' weakness, and only later did faint come to mean genuinely weak.
Word origin
From Old French 'faint', past participle of 'faindre/feindre' meaning 'to feign, shirk', from Latin 'fingere' (to shape, pretend); the 'weak' sense grew from the idea of cowardly shirking.
Remember it
FAINT vs FEINT: a FAINT light is weak; a FEINT is a fake move. Both pretend - one to fool, one too tired to try.
A little poem
A pencil line, almost-
the map's last road fades to nothing
right where you must go.
haiku
Wordplay
- The boxer threw a faint and his opponent collapsed - turns out he should have thrown a feint.
What it teaches
Faint signals are easy to ignore and expensive to miss; the quiet ones often matter most.
Quick facts
What does FAINT mean?
Lacking strength, brightness, or clarity; barely perceptible.
Is FAINT a valid word?
Yes — FAINT is one of the answer words in Wordul, the daily word game.
How many letters is FAINT?
FAINT has 5 letters and 1 syllable.
Where does FAINT come from?
From Old French 'faint', past participle of 'faindre/feindre' meaning 'to feign, shirk', from Latin 'fingere' (to shape, pretend); the 'weak' sense grew from the idea of cowardly shirking.
What can FAINT teach us?
Faint signals are easy to ignore and expensive to miss; the quiet ones often matter most.
How players do
Be the first to solve it.