figment
/ˈfɪɡm(ə)nt
/- The recent analysis, however, suggests that the events depicted were horrifyingly real and not figments of artists' imagination.
- They were unpleasant sometimes, but no more so than being in this prison, and they seemed too real to be merely figments of his imagination.
- So at first she did not even know if it was real or a figment of her imagination.
Synonyms
Origin
Late Middle English (denoting an invented statement or story): from Latin figmentum, related to fingere 'form, contrive'. Compare with feign and fiction. The current sense dates from the early 17th century.
faint from Middle English:
The word faint is related to feign, both coming from French faindre and initially used in the original French sense of ‘feigned, simulated’, from Latin fingere ‘to form, contrive’ also the source of fiction (Late Middle English) and figment (Late Middle English). Another early meaning was ‘cowardly’, a sense now preserved only in the proverb faint heart never won fair lady. The sense ‘hardly perceptible’ dates from the mid 17th century. Feint (late 17th century) originally used in fencing for a deceptive blow is from the same source, while the mid 19th-century use of feint for lightly lined paper is simply a respelling of faint.