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fake

Pronunciation: /feɪ̯k/

The English word “fake” has 13 meanings listed here.

adjective

  1. Not real; false, fraudulent.
  2. Insincere

noun

  1. Something which is not genuine, or is presented fraudulently.
  2. A move meant to deceive an opposing player, used for gaining advantage for example when dribbling an opponent.
  3. A trick; a swindle.
  4. An impostor.
  5. One of the circles or windings of a cable or hawser, as it lies in a coil; a single turn or coil.

verb

  1. To make a counterfeit, to counterfeit, to forge, to falsify.
  2. To make a false display of, to affect, to feign, to simulate.
  3. To cheat; to swindle; to steal; to rob.
  4. To modify fraudulently, so as to make an object appear better or other than it really is.
  5. To improvise, in jazz.
  6. 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.

Etymology

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”),…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.