Faerie, Fairy, Fate
In its very oldest sense, a fairy is one who speaks, and Faerie is the realm of the speakers; and fate is what they speak.
Both words are from Proto Indo European bha, “to speak”, which has many other distinguished descendants, such as fable, fandango, infant, prophet, ban, bee, fame, phone, symphony, blasphemy, boon, and fate. Bha became fari “to speak” in Latin, and derived from that was a fatum, a thing spoken by the gods — a destiny, a doom. The plural form was fata, the Fates, and this is the word that entered English as fate.
Fata descended into Old French as fae, and derived from that was Old French faerie, which had the same meaning it has today — “land of the fairies, fairy meeting, enchantment, magic”. It entered English around 1300, and by 1400 it was also used to refer to fairies as well as their world and their magic. The modern English distinction between fairy, a supernatural being, and Faerie, referring to their realm and things of it, is a distinction that appeared in the late 19th century.
The combination of the freedom of “f” and flexible, broad energy of long “a” is a powerful one, made even more potent by “r” and extended indefinitely by the long “e” at the end. The overall force is of a power that is strong, free, expansive, immortal. The similarity in sound between fairy/Fairie and free is not accidental; and the use of the word as slang for “homosexual” (recorded first in 1895) is particularly interesting.
In fate, however, the result is different: the strong, free, expansive force is trapped and channeled onto a single path (”t”). Whether the path is good or bad is not indicated.
