fable

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Fable

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[edit] English

[edit] Etymology

From Middle English, from Old French, from Latin fabula, from fari (“‘to speak, say’”). See Ban, and compare fabulous, fame.

[edit] Pronunciation

•  Audio (US)^{help, file}
• Rhymes: -eɪbəl

[edit] Noun

fable (plural fables)

1. A fictitious narration intended to enforce some useful truth or precept, usually with animals, birds etc as characters; an apologue. Prototypically, Aesop's Fables.
2. Any story told to excite wonder; common talk; the theme of talk.
   • 1 Timothy 4:7,

     Old wives' fables.

   • Alfred Tennyson,

     We grew The fable of the city where we dwelt.

3. Fiction; untruth; falsehood.
   • Joseph Addison,

     It would look like a fable to report that this gentleman gives away a great fortune by secret methods.

[edit] Synonyms

• (fiction to enforce a useful precept): morality play
• (story to excite wonder):
• (falsehood):

[edit] Translations

[edit] Verb

to fable (third-person singular simple present fables, present participle fabling, simple past and past participle fabled)

1. (intransitive, archaic) To compose fables; hence, to write or speak fiction ; to write or utter what is not true.
   • Shakespeare, 1 Henry VI, IV-ii:

     He Fables not.

   • Matthew Prior:

     Vain now the tales which fabling poets tell.

   • Matthew Arnold:

     He fables, yet speaks truth.

2. (transitive, archaic) To feign; to invent; to devise, and speak of, as true or real; to tell of falsely.
   • John Milton:

   • The hell thou fablest.

[edit] Translations

[edit] References

• fable in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913