[a. Fr. feinte (= Pr. fenha, fencha, OSp. and It. finta), abstr. noun, f. feindre to FEIGN.]
1. A feigned or false attack. Also in phrases in feint, to make a feint.
a. Fencing and Boxing. A blow, cut, or thrust aimed at a part other than that which is the real object of attack.
[1600. O. E., Repl. to Libel, I. iii. 67. A finta, or fained shew of a downe right blow.]
1684. R. H., School Recreat., 63. This Guard may be pursued either with Striking, Binding, Volcing, or Passing; for a Feint on this Guard will signifie little or nothing if your Adversary understand it.
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), Feint.… A Term in Fencing, when an Offer is made at one Part, and a real Pass at another.
1730–6. in Bailey (folio).
1817. Scott, Rob Roy, xxv. He exhausted every feint and stratagem proper to the science of defence.
1825. Waterton, Wanderings in South America, III. 202. I smiled in a good-natured manner, and made a feint to cut them down with the weapon I had in my hand.
1872. Baker, Nile Tribut., viii. 117. If opposed to a good swordsman they would be perfectly at his mercy, as a feint at the head causes them to raise the shield; this prevents them from seeing the point, that would immediately pass through the body.
1879. Farrar, St. Paul, II. 73. He aimed straight blows, and not in feint, at the enemy; nay, he even blackened his body with blows, and led it about as a slave, lest in any way after acting as herald to others he himself should be rejected from the lists.
b. Mil. A movement made with the object of deceiving an enemy as to a general’s real plans.
1683. W. Temple, Memoirs, Wks. 1731, I. 458. In October, Friburg had been taken by a Feinte of the Duke of Crequi, before the Duke of Lorrain cou’d come to relieve it.
1701. Lond. Gaz., No. 3713/1. Some troops were ordered to make a Feint.
1783. R. Watson, Philip III. (1793), II. v. 108. He drew near to the Spanish camp by night, by storming, or even making a feint of storming which, he hoped to be able to succour Vercelli.
1809. Wellington, in Gurw., Desp., V. 30. These movements are intended only as a feint.
1868. G. Duff, Pol. Surv., 65. She [Russia] may make an attack on India by way of feint, in order to distract our attention from her designs on Turkey.
2. transf. and fig. An assumed appearance; a pretence, stratagem.
1679. Sir C. Lyttelton, in Hatton Corr. (1878), 206. All this is but a feint.
1740. Somerville, Hobbinol, II. 410.
| A Feint he made | |
| With well dissembled Guile. |
1754. Sherlock, Disc. (1759), I. ix. 265. To shew that this Objection is not a mere Feint, ask any one who makes it, whether he thinks any Man could impose one of the Heathen Forms of Worship, or any thing like it, on him?
1832. Lander, Adv. Niger, I. iv. 182. We imagine that it is only a feint of Mausolah to detain us.
1851. Gallenga, Italy, 49. That protest … would have been merely a feint.
1852. Dickens, Christmas Books, The Haunted Man. (C. D. ed.), 206. Mr. Williams approached him nearer, and made a feint of accidentally knocking the table with a decanter, to rouse him.
b. Rhetoric. (see quot.)
1730–6. Bailey (folio), Feint, a figure whereby the orator touches on something, in making a show of passing it over in silence.
† 3. Music. (see quots.) [So formerly Fr. feinte.]
1730–6. Bailey (folio), Feint, sb. (in Musick) a semi-tone, the same that is called Diesis.
1823. Crabb, Technol. Dict., Feint (Mus.) a semi-tone, the same as the Diesis.
