Russell Kent wrote:

Interesting. I'm now equally uncertain as to which is the proper phrase. I
can see where one might use "faint (weak) praise" or "feint (false or
deceptive) praise". A brief Google search failed to turn up a definitive
page. Numerous usages exist for both forms.

AltaVista shows 96 occurrences of "feint praise" and 10,447
occurrences of "faint praise" across the web. While popular usage is
certainly not always an accurate measure of correctness, it can
sometimes provide reasonable clues when authoritative sources are
lacking. The adjectival form of "feint", meaning "feigned", is
archaic (1). Many expressions, however, use archaic words.
The best clue in this particular case is in the phrase itself. While
one could "damn" with faint (weak) praise, one would likely only
"deceive" with feigned (false) praise. IMO, the phrase just doesn't
make much sense using "feint". It could be argued that one could damn
with excessive or effusive feint (feigned) praise, but that is more
than the phrase in question suggests. Bartlett's Familiar Quotes has
this,

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
-- Alexander Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot [1734]. Prologue to
Imitations of Horace, l. 193

Notice that faint is an adjective while feint is not.

Irrelevant. Red is a noun. What part of speech does "red" play in the phrase
"roll out the red carpet"? It's an adjective, or more properly an adjectival
noun. So "feint" would be functioning as an adjectival noun for "praise".

All my dictionaries show red as both a noun and an adjective. Your
use of "red" simply uses its common adjective form. An example of an
adjectival noun would be the word "village" in the phrase "village
idiot". I expect Barnyard Bob could have a field day with that
opening.

As a last resort in resolving such issues, I have found the newsgroup
alt.usage.english quite helpful.

David O -- http://www.AirplaneZone.com

1: Webster's Third New International Dictionary - Unabridged