Forms: 4–5 feinte, 4–6 faynt(e, (6 fayncte), feynt(e, 5– faint. [f. FAINT a.; cf. the rare OF. feintir = sense 1.]
1. intr. To lose heart or courage, be afraid, become depressed, give way, flag. Now only arch. after Biblical uses.
c. 1350. Will. Palerne, 3638. For here fon gun feynte & felde were manye.
a. 1400. Adam Davy’s Dreams, 118. A voice me bede I ne shulde nouȝth feinte.
1526. Tindale, 2 Cor. iv. 1. As mercy is come on us we fayncte not.
1548. Hall, Chron., 59 b. The straunger so faced the Englishman, that he faynted in hys sute.
1653. Holcroft, Procopius, II. 41. The soldiers blamed each other for fainting.
1701. Steele, Chr. Hero, III. 62. His great heart, instead of fainting and subsiding, rose and biggen’d.
1722. Sewel, Hist. Quakers (1795), I. III. 187. Because of his youth he was despised by many; yet he fainted not: and esteeming it his duty now to labour in the ministry of the gospel, he desired to be discharged of his service.
1827. Keble, Chr. Y., 24th Sund. after Trin.
| Why should we faint and fear to live alone, | |
| Since all alone, so Heaven has will’d, we die, | |
| Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own, | |
| Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh. |
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), II. 478, Alcibiades I. Answer, and faint not.
2. To become faint, grow weak or feeble, decline. Const. in, of. Obs. exc. poet.
c. 1400. Destr. Troy, 13918. All feblit þe freike, fainted of strenght.
c. 1450. The Court of Love, 459.
| All her ymage paynte | |
| In the remembraunce, till thow begynne to faynte. |
1530. Rastell, Bk. Purgat., II. xviii. The understandynge begynnyth to faynt.
1568. Jacob & Esau, I. i. 31, in Hazl., Dodsley (1874) II. 190. Sometimes Esau’s self will faint for drink and meat.
1623. Bingham, Xenophon, 45. If they perceiue, that you faint in courage, you must expect the like from them.
1697. Dryden, Virg. Æneid, IX. 472.
| Now where Messapus Quarter’d they arrive; | |
| The Fires were fainting there, and just alive. |
1820. Shelley, Œdipus Tyrannus, II. i. 56.
| Loading the morning winds until they faint | |
| With living fragrance, are so beautiful! |
1866. B. Taylor, Poems, The Odalisque, 9.
| The day, through shadowy arches fainting | |
| Reveals the garden’s burst of bloom, | |
| With lights of shifting iris painting | |
| The jasper pavement of thy room. |
† b. To fall short. Obs. rare.
1623. Bingham, Lepsius’ Comparison, 3. It fainteth or straieth from the marke, if you aime further off.
3. To fall into a swoon. Also with away.
c. 1400. Destr. Troy, 3550.
| He … fainted for febull, and felle to þe ground | |
| In a swyme & a swogh, as he swelt wold. |
c. 1440. York Myst., xlv. 95. Caste some watir vppon me, I faynte!
1600. Shaks., As You Like It, IV. iii. 149.
| And now he fainted, | |
| And cride in fainting vpon Rosalinde. |
1668. Etheredge, She wou’d if She cou’d, IV. i.
| La. Cock. Oh, I shall faint! Did not you promise | |
| Me you wou’d not be so rash? |
1703. Maundrell, Journ. Jerus. (1732), 107. Where Christ fainted thrice, under the weight of his Cross.
1742. Wesley, Jrnl., 18 Jan. As soon as she rose from prayer she fainted away.
1847. Grote, Greece, II. lii. (1862), IV. 421. He fainted away and fell back.
1880. Ouida, Moths, I. i. 16–7. She could have struck her sun-shade furiously at all creation; she could have fainted, only the situation would have been rendered more ridiculous still if she had, and that consciousness sustained her; the sands, and the planks, and the sea, and the sun, all went round her in a whirl of wrath.
b. To droop, sink into. lit. and fig. rare.
1712–4. Pope, Rape Lock, IV. 34.
| There Affectation … | |
| Faints into airs, and languishes with pride. |
1821. Keats, Lamia, 138.
| Her fearful sobs, self-folding like a flower | |
| That faints into itself at evening hour. |
4. To lose color or brightness; to fade, die away. Const. into. Now rare.
1430. Lydgate, Chronicle of Troy, II. xvii.
| With gold and asure her statue they do paint. | |
| And other coloures that may neuer faynte. |
1594. Plat, The Jewell House of Art and Nature, III. 66. The Wines doe rope or beginne to faile or faint in themselues.
1669. A. Browne, Ars Pictoria, 90. Your first ground must be of the colour of the Earth and dark; yellowish, brown, green, the next successively as they loose in their distance must also faint and abate in their colours.
1708. J. Philips, Cyder, II. 67.
| Yet’s unskill’d to tell | |
| Or where one Colour rises, or one faints. |
1711. Pope, Let. H. Cromwell, 12 Nov. Those various figures in the gilded clouds, which while we gaze long upon, to separate the parts of each imaginary image, the whole faints before the eye, and decays into confusion.
1873. Miss Thackeray, Old Kensington, xv. 124. The draperies hang fainting and turning grey and brown and to all sorts of strange autumnal hues in this bright spring sunshine.
1890. W. C. Russell, Ocean Tragedy, III. xxxii. 193–4. Overhead the sky had fainted into a sickly hectic, and it was an ugly sallow sort of green down in the east, with a large star there trembling mistily.
b. nonce-use. To grow dull or insensible to.
1669. Penn, No Cross, Wks. 1782, II. 93. We fainted to that pleasure and delight we once loved.
5. trans. To make faint or weak, depress, enfeeble, weaken. Rare in mod. use. Also impers. It faints me.
c. 1386. Chaucer, Man of Law’s T., 828. O luxurie … thou feyntest mannes mynde.
c. 1400. Destr. Troy, 11162. Þurgh failyng of fode … fainttes þe pepull.
c. 1420. Pallad. on Husb., III. 1090. Ffele I have seyn thair dammes feynt or quelle.
1509. Hawes, The Pastime of Pleasure, XIX. xiii.
| Doth he not knowe how your hert is faynted, | |
| Wyth fervent love so surely attaynted? |
1581. Mulcaster, Positions, iv. (1887), 22. Neither faint it [the body] with heat, nor freese it with cold.
1613. Shaks., Hen. VIII., II. iii. 103.
| It faints me | |
| To thinke what followes. |
1614. T. Adams, in Spurgeon, Treas. Dav., Ps. xxxv. 3. Deferred hope faints the heart.
a. 1657. R. Loveday, Letters (1662), 195. It even faints my industry.
1755. Guthrie, Christians Gt. Interest (1667), 113. This seriousness breaketh the man’s heart, and fainteth the stoutness of it.
1858. Mrs. Oliphant, Laird of Norlaw, III. xiv. 175. Too much joy almost fainted the heart of the Mistress within her.
1871. R. Ellis, Catullus, lxiv. 215.
| Son, mine only delight, than life more lovely to gaze on, | |
| Son, whom needs it faints me to launch full-tided on hazards, | |
| Whom my winter of years hath laid so lately before me. |
† b. To make less, diminish. Obs. rare.
1599. Marston, The Scourge of Villanie, III. viii. 212.
| With incensing touch | |
| To faint his force. |
