Fient

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An evil spirit or demon in Scottish usage ; an emphatic Scots intensifier meaning nothing or not a single bit at all
2. A Scottish word for a devil or wicked being ; a Scots expression added to a negative to mean not in the least
3. Scots term for a demon or fiend ; used in Scottish speech after a negative to stress that nothing whatever is meant

Etymology: "Fient" is best read as an older spelling of "fiend," a form that appeared in Middle English and Scots, when spelling was far from standardized. The underlying word is Old English "fēond," meaning enemy or foe, long before it came to mean a demon. Its ancestor, reconstructed as Proto-Germanic ""fijandz," was the present participle of a verb meaning "to hate," so a fiend was literally "one who hates." The same grammatical pattern gives us "friend." Its Proto-Germanic source, ""frijōndz," was the participle of a verb meaning "to love." The two words were once mirror images: friend was the one who loved you and fiend the one who hated you. Over centuries, "fiend" narrowed in English to the devil and to wicked people, while "friend" kept its affectionate sense.