Mid 18th century; earliest use found in Alexander Ross (1699–1784), poet. Reduced form of frae, Scots variant of fro.

• fairy from Middle English:

  Although we now think of fairies as small, delicate creatures they come from a powerful source—Latin fata ‘the Fates’ (see fate). The old spelling faerie is first recorded in The Faerie Queene, the title of a poem by Edmund Spenser celebrating Queen Elizabeth I (the figure of the ‘Faerie Queene’ herself was taken to stand for Elizabeth). Faerie was originally the collective form of the word, with fae or nowadays fay as the singular.