fading, the name of a dance; ‘Fading is a fine jig’, Beaumont and Fl., Knight B. Pestle, iv. 5 (end). ‘With a fading’ was the refrain of a popular song of an indecent character, Winter’s Tale, iv. 4. 195.
fagary, a vagary, freak. Middleton, Roaring Girl, iv. 2 (Goshawk); Lady Alimony, ii. 1 (1 Boy). See [fegary].
fagioli, French beans. B. Jonson, Cynthia’s Revels, ii. 1 (Mercury). Ital. fagioli, ‘french peason, kidney beanes’ (Florio), Late L. phaseolus (Pliny), earlier L. phaselus (Virgil), Gk. φάσηλος, a kidney-bean.
fail, fayl, to deceive. Spenser, F. Q. ii. 5. 11; iii. 11. 46. F. faillir, to deceive (Cotgr.).
fain, to rejoice. Spenser, F. Q. v. 12. 36. Hence fayning, gladsome, wistful, Hymn of Love, 216. OE. fægnian, to rejoice.
fair, fairness, beauty. Greene, Looking Glasse, i. 1. 81 (Rasni); Death of E. of Huntingdon, ii. 1 (Salisbury); iii. 4 (Leicester); in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, viii. 255, 282.
fairy money, money given by fairies, which turned to dry leaves if talked about; ‘Such borrowed wealth, like Fairy-money . . . will be but Leaves and Dust when it comes to use’, Locke, Human Und. I, iv. (NED.); Beaumont and Fl., Honest Man’s Fortune, v. 1 (Montague). See Davies.
faitour, an impostor, cheat, a lying vagabond. Spenser, Shep. Kal., May, 39; faytor, F. Q. i. 12. 35; 2 Hen. IV, ii. 4. 173. See Notes to Piers Plowman, p. 166. The word means a sham, a maker-up of a character. OF. faitour, faiteör, Romanic type factitorem.
fa la, a snatch of song; ‘The fiddle, and the fa las’, Fletcher, Mons. Thomas, iv. 2 (Launcelot). From the notes in the upper part of the gamut—fa-sol-la-si. Hence, fa la la, as a refrain of a song.
fall, the blast blown on a horn at the death of the deer. Gascoigne, Art of Venerie, ed. Hazlitt, ii. 315. See [mort].