fiction

fiction, figment, fabrication, fable are comparable when meaning a story, an account, an explanation, or a conception which is an invention of the human mind.

Fiction so strongly implies the use of the imagination that it serves as the class name for all prose or poetic writings which deal with imagined characters and situations or with actual characters or situations with less concern for the his-toricity of the details than for the telling of an interesting, coherent story. In the sense here particularly considered, a fiction is something that is made up without reference to and often in defiance of fact or reality or truth, typically for some such reason as to avoid telling an unpleasant or inconvenient truth

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Adrian . .. was at a loss what to invent to detain him, beyond the stale fiction that his father was coming tomorrow— Meredith

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or to describe or explain someone or something about whom or which practically nothing is known

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Karl Joël . . . spent fifteen of the best years of his life over the Xenophontic Socrates, to discover that the figure was just as much a fiction as the Platonic Socrates— Ellis

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or to impose upon others an interpretation or an assumption that serves one's own ends or that satisfies the unthinking because of its accord with outward appearances

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the notion that a business is clothed with a public interest and has been devoted to the public use is little more than a fiction intended to beautify what is disagreeable to the sufferers— Justice Holmes

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few of the usual fictions on which society rested had ever required such defiance of facts— Henry Adams

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or, especially in legal or scientific use, to provide a convenient assumption or method whereby one can deal with what is beyond the range of rational or objective proof

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the Linnaean and similar classificatory systertis are fictions . . . having their value simply as pictures, as forms of representation— Ellis

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Fiction may apply to something which appears to be or is believed to be true or which accords with some higher form of truth (as "poetic truth," "philosophical truth," or "spiritual truth") or with the demands of reason when these come into conflict with fact or with the world as apprehended by the senses; figment and fabrication, on the other hand, carry no im-plication of justification and typically suggest a defiance of truth of whatever kind or degree.

Figment usually suggests the operation of fancy or of unlicensed imagination and neglect of fact

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the rude, unvarnished gibes with which he demolished every figment of defense— Stevenson

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a sense of unreality was creeping over him. Surely this great Chamber . . . did not exist at all but as a gigantic fancy of his own! And all these figures were figments of his brain!— Galsworthy

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Fabrication applies to something that is made up with artifice and usually with the intent to deceive; consequently it is often used of a fiction that is a deliberate and complete falsehood

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the common account of his disappearance is a. fabrication

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the legend, though some of its details are obviously fictitious, cannot be dismissed as a pure fabrication

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it is evidence—fact, not fabrication— Partridge

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the Government story was not a complete fabrication but a careful distortion— Devlin

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Fable (see also ALLEGORY 2) applies to a fictitious narrative that is obviously unconcerned with fact, usually because it deals with events or situations that are marvelous, impossible, preposterous, or incredible

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if we may take the story of Job for a history, not a fable— Defoe

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nothing but whispered suspicions, old wives' tales, fables invented by men who had nothing to do but loaf in the drugstore and make up stories— Anderson

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Analogous words: narrative, *story, tale, anecdote, yarn