fake

English Online Dictionary. What means fake‎? What does fake mean?

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /feɪ̯k/, enPR: fāk
• Rhymes: -eɪk
• Homophone: PHEIC

Etymology 1

The origin is not known with certainty, although first attested in 1775 C.E. in British criminals' slang. It is probably from feak, feague (“to give a better appearance through artificial means, spruce up, embellish”), itself from German Low German fegen, from Middle Low German vēgen, from Old Saxon fegōn, from Proto-West Germanic *fegōn (“to clean up, polish”).

Akin to Dutch veeg (“a swipe”), Dutch vegen (“to sweep, wipe”); German fegen (“to sweep, to polish”). Compare also Old English fācn (“deceit, fraud”). Perhaps related also to Old Norse fjúka (“to fade, vanquish, disappear”), Old Norse feikn (“strange, scary, unnatural”).

Adjective

fake (comparative faker or more fake, superlative fakest or most fake)

1. Not real; false, fraudulent.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:fake

   Antonyms: authentic, genuine
2. (of people) Insincere

Derived terms

Descendants

• → Russian: фейк (fejk)
• → Turkish: feyk
• → Ukrainian: фейк (fejk)

Translations

Noun

fake (plural fakes)

1. Something which is not genuine, or is presented fraudulently.
2. (sports) A move meant to deceive an opposing player, used for gaining advantage for example when dribbling an opponent.
3. (archaic) A trick; a swindle

Synonyms

• (soccer move): feint
• (ice hockey move): deke

Descendants

• → Japanese: フェイク (feiku)

Translations

Verb

fake (third-person singular simple present fakes, present participle faking, simple past and past participle faked)

1. (transitive) To make a counterfeit, to counterfeit, to forge, to falsify.
2. (transitive) To make a false display of, to affect, to feign, to simulate.
3. (archaic) To cheat; to swindle; to steal; to rob.
4. (archaic) To modify fraudulently, so as to make an object appear better or other than it really is
5. (music, transitive, intransitive) To improvise, in jazz.
   • Denning, cited in 2020, Matt Brennan, Kick It: A Social History of the Drum Kit (page 110)

     In the face of this print music culture, 'faking' was the ability—at once respected and disrespected—to improvise a song (or a part in an arrangement) without reading the notation.

Synonyms

• (modify fraudulently): adulterate
• (make a false display): pass off, pose

Derived terms

Descendants

• → Cantonese: fake (“to fool; to deceive”)
• → French: faker

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English faken (“to coil a rope”).

Noun

fake (plural fakes)

1. (nautical) One of the circles or windings of a cable or hawser, as it lies in a coil; a single turn or coil.

Translations

Verb

fake (third-person singular simple present fakes, present participle faking, simple past and past participle faked)

1. (nautical) To coil (a rope, line, or hawser), by winding alternately in opposite directions, in layers usually of zigzag or figure of eight form, to prevent twisting when running out.

Translations

Further reading

• fake on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “fake”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “fake”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

References

Anagrams

• feak

Afar

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /faˈke/ [fʌˈkɛ]
• Hyphenation: fa‧ke

Verb

faké (frequentative fakamfaké, autobenefactive fakkaasité)

1. (transitive) open
2. (transitive) begin
3. (transitive) expose
4. (transitive) spread out

Conjugation

References

• E. M. Parker, R. J. Hayward (1985) “fake”, in An Afar-English-French dictionary (with Grammatical Notes in English), University of London, →ISBN
• Mohamed Hassan Kamil (2015) L’afar: description grammaticale d’une langue couchitique (Djibouti, Erythrée et Ethiopie)‎^[2], Paris: Université Sorbonne Paris Cité (doctoral thesis), page 275

Chinese

Etymology

From English fake.

Pronunciation

Verb

fake

1. (Hong Kong Cantonese, transitive) to fool; to deceive (such as by presenting fake or ingenuine information)
   • For quotations using this term, see Citations:fake.

French

Verb

fake

1. inflection of faker:
   1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
   2. second-person singular imperative

German

Etymology

Borrowed from English fake.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fɛɪ̯k/, /feɪ̯k/, /feːk/
• (inflected forms) IPA^(key): /fɛɪ̯kə/, /feɪ̯kə/, /feːkə/
• Homophone: Fake

Adjective

fake (strong nominative masculine singular faker, not comparable)

1. (informal) fake, sham, counterfeit

Usage notes

In most cases corresponding to hypothetical English occurrences which would be deemed adjectives, the German is part of a compound with the noun Fake, and the existence of such an adjective is not widely accepted, however at least in the colloquial of the fashion scene, in reference to counterfeits, it is a fully declined adjective; cf. woke, and anywhere else where there is a heavy influx of English there may be at least predicative-only use.

Declension

Further reading

• “fake” in Uni Leipzig: Wortschatz-Lexikon

Kristang

Noun

fake

1. knife

Portuguese

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English fake.

Pronunciation

• Hyphenation: fake

Adjective

fake (invariable)

1. (Internet slang) fake, untrue, not genuine

   Synonym: falso

   Antonyms: verdadeiro, genuíno

Related terms

Noun

fake m (plural fakes)

1. (Internet slang) a fake account in a social network or other online community; a sock puppet

Further reading

• “fake”, in Dicionário inFormal (in Portuguese), 2006–2024