Fake

How to spell fake

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce fake

What does fake mean?

1. adjectiveNot genuine; made to look real in order to deceive.
2. nounA person or thing that is not what it claims to be; a forgery or impostor.
3. verbTo make a false copy of something, or to pretend in order to deceive.

Fake in a sentence

• adjective

  The dealer was selling fake designer handbags at the market.

• noun

  The painting hanging in the gallery turned out to be a fake.

• verb

  He tried to fake his signature on the contract.

• adjective

  Customs officers seized a shipment of fake banknotes.

• noun

  Experts quickly exposed the autograph as a clumsy fake.

• verb

  The actor had to fake a fall during the rehearsal.

Where does fake come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The exact origin of fake is genuinely murky, and lexicographers have long argued over it. It surfaced in English around the early nineteenth century as a piece of thieves' cant and criminal slang, where to fake something meant to tamper with it, doctor it, or dress it up to deceive. A leading suggestion traces it to the German verb fegen, meaning literally 'to sweep' or 'to clean', which in colloquial use could carry the sense of furbishing something up to pass it off as better than it was. Some scholars instead connect it to an older underworld word, feague, with a similar meaning of polishing or making presentable for trickery. From these shady beginnings the word climbed into respectable everyday English, broadening from 'to swindle or counterfeit' into the general modern senses of anything counterfeit, the counterfeit object itself, and the act of pretending. Because the source is disputed and no living relatives obviously survive, the spelling offers no helpful clue, so it simply has to be learned as the short, blunt word it is.

How the word is built

• fake (single root, of uncertain origin; no productive prefix or suffix in the base form)