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Faint
Definitions
- 1 Lacking strength; weak; languid; inclined to lose consciousness
"I felt faint after my fifth gin and tonic."
- 2 Lacking courage, spirit, or energy; cowardly; dejected.
"Faint heart ne'er won fair lady."
- 3 Barely perceptible; not bright, or loud, or sharp.
"There was a faint red light in the distance."
- 4 Performed, done, or acted, weakly; not exhibiting vigor, strength, or energy.
"faint efforts"
- 5 Slight; minimal.
"a faint chance"
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- 6 Sickly, so as to make a person feel faint. archaic
"Happening to pass a fruiterer’s on their way; the door of which was open, though the shop was by this time shut; one of them remarked how faint the peaches smelled."
- 1 lacking conviction or boldness or courage wordnet
- 2 lacking clarity or distinctness wordnet
- 3 indistinctly understood or felt or perceived wordnet
- 4 deficient in magnitude; barely perceptible; lacking clarity or brightness or loudness etc wordnet
- 5 lacking strength or vigor wordnet
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- 6 weak and likely to lose consciousness wordnet
- 1 The act of fainting, syncope.
"She suffered another faint."
- 2 a spontaneous loss of consciousness caused by insufficient blood to the brain wordnet
- 3 The state of one who has fainted; a swoon. rare
- 1 To lose consciousness through a lack of oxygen or nutrients to the brain, usually as a result of suddenly reduced blood flow (may be caused by emotional trauma, loss of blood or various medical conditions). intransitive
"A fainting fit."
- 2 pass out from weakness, physical or emotional distress due to a loss of blood supply to the brain wordnet
- 3 To lose courage or spirit; to become depressed or despondent. intransitive
"If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small."
- 4 To decay; to disappear; to vanish. intransitive
"November 12, 1711, Alexander Pope, letter to Henry Cromwell Gilded clouds, while we gaze upon them, faint before the eye."
Etymology
From Middle English faynt, feynt (“weak; feeble”), from Old French faint, feint (“feigned; negligent; sluggish”), past participle of feindre, faindre (“to feign; sham; work negligently”), from Latin fingere (“to touch, handle, form, shape, frame, form in thought, imagine, conceive, contrive, devise, feign”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeyǵʰ- (“to mold”). Cognate with feign and fiction and more distantly dough.
From Middle English faynt, feynt (“weak; feeble”), from Old French faint, feint (“feigned; negligent; sluggish”), past participle of feindre, faindre (“to feign; sham; work negligently”), from Latin fingere (“to touch, handle, form, shape, frame, form in thought, imagine, conceive, contrive, devise, feign”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeyǵʰ- (“to mold”). Cognate with feign and fiction and more distantly dough.
From Middle English fainten, feynten, from the adjective (see above).
See also for "faint"
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