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Fi or Fie!

An exclamation indicating that what is reproved is dirty or indecent. The dung of many animals, as the boar, wolf, fox, marten, and badger, is called fiants, and the “orificium anaʹle” is called a fi, a word still used in Lincolnshire. (Anglo-Norman, fay, to clean out; Saxon, afylan, to foul; our defile or file, to make foul; filth, etc.)

The old words, fie-corn (dross corn), fi-lands (unenclosed lands), fi-mashings (the dung of any wild beast), etc., are compounds of the same word.

“I had another process against the dungfarmer, Master Fifi.”—Rabelais: Pantagruel, book ii. 17.

 

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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Feu de Joie (French)
Feud
Feudal
Feudal System (The)
Feuillants
Feuilleton [feu-yĕ-ton]
Fever-lurdan or Fever-lurgan
Fever-lurk
Fey
Fezon
Fi or Fie!
Fi. Fa
Fiacre
Fian (John)
Fiars
Fiasco
Fiat
Fib
Fico
Fiddle (Latin, fidis or fides)
Fiddle About (To)