English

edit

Etymology

edit

From feign +‎ -ful.

Adjective

edit

feignful (comparative more feignful, superlative most feignful)

  1. False; feigned.
    • 1847, Thomas Cooper, The Purgatory of Suicides: A Prison-rhyme : in Ten Books, page 138:
      The bawd, all palsy-twitched, whose feignful glee, When he beholds her face upon the morrow, With sobered brain, will freeze his jollity To speechless horror, till he fain would borrow Thy veil, once more, to hide his young remorseful sorrow.
    • 2008, Sean C. Cusack, Code 3: The Rise & Fall of a Private Ambulance Empire, page 401:
      So feignful for its creator to flee in glee as the mighty vessel was capsizing before him.
    • 2019, Alf Gunvald Nilsen, Adivasis and the State:
      Chief among these is his rejection of the possibility that subaltern groups can be complicit in the imaginaries that legitimise domination, and — concomitantly— the claim that acquiescence is only ever a feignful performance of an ideological script, and never a measure of some degree of consent.