feign.
To make a false show or pretence of; to counterfeit or simulate.
Meaning & usage
To make a false show or pretence of; to counterfeit or simulate.
The pupil feigned sickness on the day of his exam.
They feigned her signature on the cheque.
To imagine; to invent; to pretend to do something.
He feigned that he had gone home at the appointed time.
To make an action as if doing one thing, but actually doing another, for example to trick an opponent; to feint.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English feynen, feinen, borrowed from Old French feindre (“to pretend”), from Latin fingere (“to form, shape, invent”). Compare French feignant (present participle of feindre, literally “feigning”). Also compare feint, figment and fiction.
Try it on your idea.
feign has 5 characters. Say it out loud, try it alongside a description of your project, and see whether its meaning fits what you want to create.
These are naming prompts. Meanings and pronunciation can vary; existing brand and domain uses have not been checked.
Explore the name generatorA word with a source.
Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.