Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Having a false or misleading appearance; fraudulent.
  • noun One that is not authentic or genuine; a sham.
  • noun Sports A brief feint or aborted change of direction intended to mislead one's opponent or the opposing team.
  • intransitive verb To contrive and present as genuine; counterfeit.
  • intransitive verb To simulate; feign.
  • intransitive verb Music To improvise (a passage).
  • intransitive verb Sports To deceive (an opponent) with a fake. Often used with out.
  • intransitive verb To engage in feigning, simulation, or other deceptive activity.
  • intransitive verb Sports To perform a fake.
  • noun One loop or winding of a coiled rope or cable.
  • transitive verb To coil (a rope or cable).

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To fold; tuck up.
  • Specifically Nautical, to coil in fakes, as a cable or a shot-line in a faking-box. See faking-box.
  • To make or do.
  • To cheat or deceive.
  • To steal or filch; pick, as a pocket.
  • To conceal the defects of by artificial means, usually with intent to deceive: as, to fake a dog or a fowl by coloring the hair or feathers.
  • noun A fold or ply of anything, as a garment.
  • noun Specifically Nautical, one of the circles or windings of a cable or hawser as it lies in a coil; a single turn or coil, as one of the oblong loops into which a shot-line is wound in being placed in a faking-box.
  • noun A plaid. Also in diminutive form fakie, faikie. Jamieson.
  • noun plural A miners' term in Scotland and the north of England for fissile sandy shales, or shaly sandstones, as distinct from the dark bituminous shales known as blaes.
  • To grasp.
  • To give heed to.
  • To believe; credit.
  • noun A swindle; a trick.
  • noun A swindler; a trickster.
  • noun Same as faker, 3.
  • noun Theat., any unused or worn-out and worthless piece of property; hence, any odd bit of merchandise sold by street-venders.
  • noun A soft-soldering fluid used by jewelers.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Naut.) One of the circles or windings of a cable or hawser, as it lies in a coil; a single turn or coil.
  • noun Slang A trick; a swindle.
  • transitive verb (Naut.) To coil (a rope, line, or hawser), by winding alternately in opposite directions, in layers usually of zigzag or figure of eight form,, to prevent twisting when running out.
  • transitive verb a box in which a long rope is faked; used in the life-saving service for a line attached to a shot.
  • transitive verb To cheat; to swindle; to steal; to rob.
  • transitive verb To make; to construct; to do.
  • transitive verb To manipulate fraudulently, so as to make an object appear better or other than it really is.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun nautical One of the circles or windings of a cable or hawser, as it lies in a coil; a single turn or coil.
  • verb nautical To coil (a rope, line, or hawser), by winding alternately in opposite directions, in layers usually of zigzag or figure of eight form, to prevent twisting when running out.
  • adjective Not real; false, fraudulent.
  • noun Something which is not genuine, or is presented fraudulently.
  • noun A trick; a swindle.
  • noun soccer Move meant to deceive an opposing player, used for gaining advantage when dribbling an opponent.
  • verb To cheat; to swindle; to steal; to rob.
  • verb To make; to construct; to do. (Can we add an example for this sense?)
  • verb To modify fraudulently, so as to make an object appear better or other than it really is; as, to fake a bulldog, by burning his upper lip and thus artificially shortening it.
  • verb To make a counterfeit, to counterfeit, to forge, to falsify.
  • verb To make a false display of, to affect, to feign, to simulate.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective not genuine or real; being an imitation of the genuine article
  • adjective fraudulent; having a misleading appearance
  • noun something that is a counterfeit; not what it seems to be

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From earlier slang, to do, rob, tamper with, from earlier feak, to beat and feague, to beat, set moving, cause (a horse) to hold its tail high by artificial means, fake (as in feager, one using false documents), perhaps from German fegen, to sweep, move briskly, torment, or Dutch vegen, to sweep.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English faken, to coil a rope.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English faken, to coil a rope.

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