Feint line vs faint line

[BabyBumpHopeful]

I'm posting because I'm curious why people keep writing "feint" line when they mean the line is barely there (i.e. faint). Is it a play on the meaning of "feint" which is "a deceptive or pretended blow, thrust, or other movement".

Is this a MN thing that I've missed along the way? Or is it just a common MNers spelling error?

I thought it was a spelling error. Its faint, surely.

Unless it's some kind of in joke I'd assume it's a combination of poor spelling and auto correct.

I thought it was poor spelling but now I'm seeing it a lot and started to wonder the same OP!

I see it loads! Very annoying!

It is poor spelling. Same as discrete in the breastfeeding topic and people loosing weight.

OKay phew! I thought I was missing some "in" joke because I'm noticing it everywhere. Now that we've noticed maybe we SHOULD make it an in joke because I do think those lines are "feinting" us out something!

Defo due to shit spelling

Tut-tut. I often make grammatical errors when typing as I go back and edit and then miss something. But I feel very annoyed at poor spelling which is not auto-correct related. Ah well. sips wine and saunters off again

It's autocorrect on the iPad for me. When my trusty old kindle is wired up to the gas main, lines are faint. When I have a bash with the newfangled Apple wotsit I can only manage feint!
In rl I cannot manage any sort of line; feint, faint or obvious. This worries me more than my spelling, or the spelling of others, such is life.

Waves at aus :) share the wine, mine is luke

Not just a spelling error- lined paper was always referred to as 'feint', as that is how it was spelled on the pad.

From the OED:

feint, adj.

1. . Feigned, false, or counterfeit; sham; = faint adj. 1. Now rare. a1400 (1325) Cursor Mundi (Trin. Cambr.) l. 19535 Þerfore toke he bapteme feynt [Vesp. faint]. c1400 Rom. Rose 433 She gan..To make many a feynt praiere To God. c1698 J. Locke Thoughts on Conduct of Understanding §33 Dressed up into any faint appearance of it. 1702 London Gaz. No. 3835/2, The Major..made a feint Retreat. 1704 London Gaz. No. 3986/2, Amusing the French with..feint Marches. 1854 Thackeray Newcomes (1855) II. ix. 90 We wear feint smiles over our tears and deceive our children.

1. In commercial use, the usual spelling of faint adj. 5c; freq. quasi-adv.

1859 Stationers' Hand-bk. (ed. 2) 72 Feint only, the term for a book having merely feint blue lines across the page from left to right. 1895 Army & Navy Co-op. Soc. Price List 15 Sept. 525 Foolscap Paper—Ruled with Money Columns and Feint Lines. 1930 Publishers' Circ. 13 Sept. 321/2 The actual book itself should be of foolscap size, ruled feint.

So you can see the sense in referring to a feint line on a pregnancy test.