I guess I’m an outlier. I took it to mean someone who is unreliable, pretends to be someone who they are not.
A slender effeminate guy with a limp wrist. Used to insinuate homosexuality or at least “non-manliness.”
Ditzy, in an annoying way. As Rubystreak says, “giddy and otherworldly,” but usually consciously so. Can be male or female; if male, has the addition of effiminance. Like Edward Scissorhands.
Oh yes, never saw that movie but many Depp characters would fit that adjective (both effeminate and affectedly strange.)
“Gay,” if used by a modern speaker/writer.
“Crazy, mad, willful, rash,” if used by an older writer. I think of Tolkien writing something about how one of the Elves, or Turin, maybe, was “seized by a fey mood” and went and did something rash and crazy, like storming Morgoth’s fortress alone or killing someone who insulted them but didn’t deserve death, etc.
Without looking at others’ answers…
When applied to a man, feminine, “gay”, wussy.
When applied to fantasy literature, elfin.
I’ve got an uncle that our family sometimes describes that way. He’s thin, a little bit effeminate in an old school dandy sort of way, and can spin a good yarn. Also, he’s been known to caper. Let me put it this way: people are frequently surprised that he has a wife and two kids.
my first thought was of a limp wrist.
I always heard it used as ‘having a sixth sense’ or in my family – the ones that see dead people.
Having recently seen Legally Blonde, the musical, I first thought of gay:
But I usually think of it as described above so well - like about half of Johnny Depp’s roles - not only effeminate, nor homosexual as such, but a bit like that, with a lot of strangeness mixed in.
And while we’re at it, Michael Jackson.
Skinny and pale, mildly uncomfortable to be around.
I used “fey” to describe Dylan Baker once in a movie review.
Yep, SigmaGirl, definitely sounds very much like Michael Jackson or Edward Scissorhands.
I never really knew what fey meant. I mean, I knew it meant fairy-like or ethereal but not to the point where I could use it to describe someone. Those will stick in my mental rolodex.
Without looking: wild, unpredictable, violently moody, out of one’s right mind, the joy a man mad with despair when he has decided to kill himself, and destroy everything he has loved.
I love this word.
Reading nothing other than the OP, to me it means fairies and the seelie court, that kind of jazz.
Happy and bright but with a darker side. Like sunlight just before the sun goes behind a cloud.
Pretentiously fairy-like. Someone who is intentionally, and a at least a bit obnoxiously, trying to make other people think of them as unearthly. A person who has probably written fanfic and their Mary Sue was an elf.
I don’t know about you but I’m ready for the OP to return to tell us why s/he was asking…?
I agree. It’s about damn time!
I had been watching a celebrity on some TV interview, and suddenly, into my head, popped the thought “Jesus, he’s so fey!”, with a meaning like dainty and effeminate, in a sort of overly affected way. But it was suddenly followed by “Wait, is that actually the right word? ‘Fey’? I’d better go look it up”. And trying dictionary.com and the OED and so forth, I could get nothing that mentioned anything about “effeminate”, just a bunch of stuff about being fated to die or unduly optimistic or generically weird and so forth; the closest I got to the meaning I had in mind was on m-w.com, with the third definition “3 a: excessively refined, precious b: quaintly unconventional : campy”. So then I was at least glad my use had been somewhat close to an existent use of the term, but surprised at how apparently obscure this sense was, and went running to Wikipedia to see if it could perhaps shed some light. And there, as one among many items on the disambiguation page, I finally found the cite “Fey, a term in gay slang meaning ‘effeminate’”.
“Oh!”, I thought. “Gay slang? Really? I wonder where I picked that up. Perhaps I just heard it once from someone, perhaps it’s filtered into mainstream currency, or perhaps the page is simply mistaken about its origins. Well, I might as well take a poll”. And, hence, this.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard it used to describe a person. When I hear the word, I think of elves and fairies and the like (i.e. fey-folk).