Three-Letter Words: Fey
Some of the most perplexing words on the GRE are diminutive. Who doesn’t see PAN : REVIEW and metaphorically scratch his or her head, or wonder what, exactly, a nib or a gin is on its own? Welcome to Three-Letter Words. A few of them might make you want to deploy some four-letter words.
Fey? Like Tina Fey? Perhaps Tina Fey is descended from fairies, since the word fey means, weirdly:
- like a fairy or elf; otherworldly, supernatural
- doomed to die, or full of the sense of impending death
- appearing touched or crazy
- acting an an affected way (like a modern person who thinks she’s a fairy)
Wow, that’s a lot of meanings. Let’s try some!
After seven days in the forest with only dewdrops to drink, he began seeing elves, trolls, and tiny, sparkly, fey creatures with itty-bitty flapping wings.
The fey old woman said, her hand shaking: “I don’t have much time left! You must turn off the cat and appraise cloud eleven!” Whoa.
The pop star — who until 2008 had been an unassuming college music major — all of the sudden adopted a fey demeanor, speaking in an unplaceable accent and displaying a disturbed but very artistic-looking twitch.
Try a sample Antonyms problem:
FEY :
A. adamant
B. ruddy
C. thaumaturgical
D. hale
E. meretricious
Choose your own answer, then click “more for the solution.
A good strategy for Antonyms problems is to write your own antonym before viewing the choices. Here, that’s especially hard to do, because fey, has so many definitions. We might not be able to do better than “not like a fairy, real-world / full of life / rational, sane, realistic.” Who knows which of those we’ll find a match for in the choices?
A. Adamant means “unyielding.”
B. Ruddy means “reddish.”
C. Thaumaturgical means pertaining to magic.” This is a synonym trap.
D. Hale means healthy, robust, vigorous. This is our answer.
E. Meretricious means “cheap, tawdry, deceptive.”
The answer is D.