How to Use feint in a Sentence

feint

1 of 2 noun
  • The boxer made a feint with his right, then followed with a left hook.
  • There are neat little flicks, slalom runs, full-body feints, through balls.
    — New York Times, 10 June 2026
  • The lack of a word-count facility, of the feint of a change of font.
    — Vona Groarke, The New York Review of Books, 22 Sep. 2020
  • The fight scenes are full of energetic darts and feints.
    — Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle, 15 Nov. 2025
  • Renfroe’s guard blew three times on an acorn whistle and one feint whistle came back.
    — al, 11 Aug. 2020
  • The novel does feint in this direction.
    — Christopher Tayler, Harpers Magazine, 27 Jan. 2026
  • This turns out to be mostly just a feint at divisiveness.
    — Barry Levitt, Time, 17 Oct. 2025
  • This, too, was a feint straight out the Fourth Turning playbook.
    — Adele M. Stan, The New Republic, 10 Mar. 2021
  • Bud started upping the feints, forcing Willie to swing wide and hard.
    — Tyler R. Tynes, Los Angeles Times, 23 July 2023
  • The painting makes dozens of little feints like this, giving and taking away.
    — Zachary Fine, New Yorker, 23 Feb. 2026
  • Starting a robotaxi service is not for the feint of heart or small of wallet.
    — Brad Templeton, Forbes.com, 10 Sep. 2025
  • Fortunately this segment of the story turns out to be a clever feint.
    — N. K. Jemisin, New York Times, 14 July 2017
  • That was a feint to make the final number appear more moderate.
    — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 14 July 2021
  • Such an opening seems to prime us for a piece of high-end genre work, but this is just the first of Barry’s feints.
    — Giles Harvey, The New Yorker, 20 Mar. 2023
  • Except the most important bits, which duck and feint into the margins.
    — Scarlett Thomas, New York Times, 27 May 2016
  • But that four-on-the-floor beginning is a feint of sorts, a trick to command your attention.
    — Elias Leight, Rolling Stone, 27 Apr. 2021
  • Then every movement of the game, the strategies, the dodging and feints, the squeal of sneakers on the court.
    — The Economist, 1 Feb. 2020
  • Khamenei has made feints and tactical adjustments.
    — Graeme Wood, The Atlantic, 2 Sep. 2025
  • Each feint elicits a response, maybe a defensive parry or a hop backward.
    — David Wharton, Los Angeles Times, 18 July 2021
  • Some still thought the kidnapping was a hoax and the exchange a feint to free Boko Haram fighters.
    — Drew Hinshaw, WSJ, 24 Dec. 2017
  • Politicians and consumer groups deride the idea as just the latest corporate feint to gouge the public.
    — Jeffrey Ball, Fortune, 28 Sep. 2021
  • Without spoiling too much, the movie feints at a tragic ending, but all is resolved in the final seconds.
    — Kelly Lawler, USA TODAY, 8 June 2018
  • The path to a possible meeting led through a thicket of hostility and feints.
    — Peter Baker and Choe Sang-Hun, New York Times, 10 Mar. 2018
  • European leaders seem to slowly be coming to the conclusion that this isn’t just a feint.
    — David A. Graham, The Atlantic, 20 Jan. 2026
  • However, in the 13th, Walcott let his guard down just a bit, going for a feint and a right hand.
    — Troy L. Smith, cleveland, 18 Feb. 2020
  • Cruyff was a master of flicks, feints, impudent shots and passes that described arcing lines of beauty.
    — The Economist, 7 June 2018
  • Scarpetta contains the standard allotment of feints and false leads.
    — Graham Hillard, The Washington Examiner, 20 Mar. 2026
  • In the above video, Edwards throws a jab and feint, and follows it up with a head kick that sends Rosta to the canvas.
    — James Brizuela, MSNBC Newsweek, 22 Aug. 2025
  • The 20-year-old defender ran nearly half the length of the field before playing the pass, with a few nifty feints along the way.
    — Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com, 28 May 2018
  • Ukrainian officials dismissed such talk as a feint, meant to lure their forces into a trap the Russians have had months to build.
    — Ivan Nechepurenko, New York Times, 3 Nov. 2022

feint

2 of 2 verb
  • He feinted with his right, then followed with a left hook.
  • At the 10-yard mark, Johnston stutter-stepped, feinting a break on the route.
    — Daniel Popper, The Athletic, 18 Aug. 2024
  • Hart passed to Whitley, who feinted a drive left from the left wing, drawing defenders to her.
    — Rick Armstrong, Aurora Beacon-News, 4 Mar. 2018
  • Allen feinted left, drove right, spun back to the left – hounded the entire way by Newman – and then jumped back and fired.
    — George Schroeder, USA TODAY, 26 Mar. 2018
  • None of this seems to bother Tatum, who feints and pivots and ekes out a shot over an encroaching defender.
    — The Si Staff, SI.com, 13 July 2017
  • Bud snaked his way inside, feinting in the middle distance and eating some shots on the way in — but nothing that rattled him.
    — Tyler R. Tynes, Los Angeles Times, 23 July 2023
  • Colorado keeper Zack Steffen waved, stretched both arms high, feinted right and dove hard to his left.
    — Sean Keeler, Denver Post, 19 Apr. 2026
  • Lewis-Skelly duly sauntered into the City box, feinted his way onto his wrong foot, and clipped in a beauty.
    — Amy Lawrence, The Athletic, 3 Feb. 2025
  • So far, the show seems to be at least feinting in that direction, but this season is an exercise in why leaving the books behind may be the show’s best decision.
    — Aja Romano, Vox, 18 June 2024
  • As the double approached, Stahl feinted retreat, which caused both defenders to overpursue.
    — Aaron Carter, Philly.com, 17 May 2017
  • The fire was now moving like a prowling carnivore, feinting down one street a few blocks away and then changing its mind and slithering down a different avenue.
    — Stephen Rodrick, Rolling Stone, 13 Feb. 2025
  • Sandworm spent years obfuscating and feinting and leaving false flags to suggest that others were behind its handiwork.
    — Dina Temple-Raston, Washington Post, 26 Dec. 2019
  • The show also feints at a proper whodunnit, then builds to a nuanced, if anticlimactic conclusion, and all at a lazy river’s pace.
    — Joshua Alston, Variety, 26 Apr. 2023
  • One-touch passing, feinting and ripping hard shots into a tattered net, each is super-charged by vivid daydreams of glory on the international stage.
    — Jason Motlagh, Rolling Stone, 22 June 2026
  • Yet Levinson only feints intermittently in that direction, and his greater failure is how thin these characters feel.
    — Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 8 Apr. 2026
  • Then, all of seven minutes into the game, Mbappé sent a pass to Ousmane Dembélé, who dribbled, feinted, put the ball on his right foot, and scored.
    — Louisa Thomas, New Yorker, 27 June 2026
  • But instead of just directly attacking the tackle’s near shoulder off the snap, Crawford disguises his intention by feinting a speed rush.
    — John Owning, Dallas News, 3 June 2020
  • Unlike Nolan, who wrestled with political questions in his Batman films—successfully or not—Snyder’s movies feint toward depth.
    — Eliana Dockterman, Time, 15 Mar. 2021
  • Here are sentences that feel athletic enough to sprint on for pages, feinting in different directions at once, dropping disparate allusions, tossing off witty asides, refracting competing ironies.
    — Ron Charles, The Denver Post, 31 May 2017
  • Here are sentences that feel athletic enough to sprint on for pages, feinting in different directions at once, dropping disparate allusions, tossing off witty asides, refracting competing ironies.
    — Ron Charles, The Mercury News, 7 June 2017
  • The reveal that precocious little Maisie Lockwood is actually a clone gives a human face to the vague ethical quandary Fallen Kingdom feints at.
    — James Grebey, Vulture, 6 Mar. 2025
  • What’s more, Susan Neuman told me, some clever members of the sixty per cent may be able to feint their way through books for early readers, and so the true extent of their lack of decoding skills may not emerge until as late as third grade.
    — Jessica Winter, The New Yorker, 1 Sep. 2022
  • Down by seven points, Pittsburgh tried an onside kick but Chris Boswell got a little too fancy by trying to employ a soccer move, feinting a kick to the left side and then kicking behind his ankle to the right.
    — Benjamin Hoffman, New York Times, 6 Nov. 2016
  • Fencers feinted and darted to wild applause from children, while a 14th-century battle between ancient Russians and the Golden Horde took place nearby.
    — Andrew Roth, Washington Post, 12 June 2017
  • These threads, along with a drama school rivalry involving Diana Cowper’s future movie star son, provide more than enough material for Horowitz to feint this way and that before revealing the killer and, just as important, the killer’s motivations.
    — Erik Spanberg, The Christian Science Monitor, 15 June 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'feint.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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