| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| feign |
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| PRONUNCIATION: |  f n |
| VERB: | Inflected forms: feigned, feign·ing, feigns
| | TRANSITIVE VERB: | 1a. To give a false appearance of: feign sleep. b. To represent falsely; pretend to: feign authorship of a novel. 2. To imitate so as to deceive: feign another's voice. 3. To fabricate: feigned an excuse. 4. Archaic To invent or imagine. | | INTRANSITIVE VERB: | To pretend; dissemble. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Middle English feinen, from Old French feindre, from Latin fingere, to shape, form. See dheigh- in Appendix I.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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