fainaigue

[prettygoodword]

fainaigue (fuh-NEYG) - v. (Brit. dialect) to shirk, to evade work or responsibility, to renege in card games.


Origin is unknown, but there is one suggestion that it's from feign + ague ("acute illness"), and so "to act sick," but this smacks of folk etymology rather than folk process. It is sometimes speculated that the 1920s Americanism finagle (to cheat or swindle, esp. with crafty, deceitful methods) is derived from this, but there's no strong evidence -- nor, for that matter, any better ideas.

---L.

Comments

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Huh, not in OED at all, but OED has fainéant, n. and adj.:

< French fainéant (16th cent. also fait-néant ) ‘do-nothing’, < fait , 3rd person singular present of faire to do + néant nothing; really an etymologizing perversion of Old French faignant sluggard (still current as a vulgarism), present participle of faindre to skulk: see faint n.

Noun citations are early C17-19 under the gloss, "One who does nothing; an idler. Often with allusion to the rois fainéants, ‘sluggard kings’, a designation of the later Merovingians." Looks related, certainly, and nearer this than "feign" even though both are ultimately cousins of it.

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

I ran that one a year or two ago, but didn't think to compare it. Hmm.

---L.