Fad

How to spell fad

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce fad

What does fad mean?

1. nounA temporary fashion, interest, or enthusiasm that becomes popular quickly and then fades.

Fad in a sentence

• The diet was just a passing fad that nobody followed for long.

• Every office seemed to adopt the standing desk fad within a single year.

Where does fad come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

The word 'fad' surfaced in English in the early 1800s, first in dialect use, meaning a passing whim, hobby, or craze that people take up enthusiastically and then drop. Its precise origin is genuinely uncertain, which is why dictionaries hedge on it. One common suggestion connects it to the older English regional word 'fidfad', a fussy, trifling concern, possibly itself a clipping of 'fiddle-faddle', meaning idle nonsense. Another line of thinking links it to the French 'fadaise', meaning a silly or trifling thing, ultimately from the Latin 'fatuus', meaning foolish. Because the trail is murky, the safest account is that 'fad' grew from a cluster of playful, dismissive words for trivial pursuits, and its short, blunt spelling matches its sense of something that flares up and fizzles out quickly.

How the word is built

• fad (single root; origin uncertain, no productive prefix or suffix)