From Old French 'feint' (sluggish, pretended), from Latin 'fingere' (to shape) — originally 'cowardly,' shifted to 'weak.'
Lacking strength or vigor; barely perceptible; feeling weak and dizzy, close to losing consciousness.
From Old French 'feint' (sluggish, indolent, cowardly, also feigned or false), past participle of 'feindre' (to feign, to pretend, to shape an excuse, to hesitate through cowardice, to hold back), from Latin 'fingere' (to shape, to fashion, to form in clay or wax, to mould, to devise, to feign, to invent, to imagine). Proto-Indo-European *dʰeiǵʰ- (to knead, to form, to build — the action of working clay or dough) underlies 'fingere' and produced Latin 'figura' (a formed shape → 'figure,' 'figurative,' 'configuration'), 'fictio' (a fashioning, a thing made → 'fiction,' 'fictitious'), 'figulus' (a potter — one who shapes clay for a living), and through the Proto-Germanic branch, Old English 'dāg' (kneaded matter → 'dough'). The original English
'Faint' and 'feint' are doublets — both come from Old French 'feint,' but they diverged in spelling and meaning. A 'feint' in fencing or boxing is a pretended attack (from the 'feigning' sense), while 'faint' developed toward 'weak.' Both words are cousins of 'fiction,' 'figure,' 'figment,' and even 'dough' — all from the PIE root *dʰeyǵʰ- (to mold, to shape), because dough is something shaped