Fable
['feɪb(ə)l] or ['febl]
Definition
(n.) A Feigned story or tale, intended to instruct or amuse; a fictitious narration intended to enforce some useful truth or precept; an apologue. See the Note under Apologue.
(n.) The plot, story, or connected series of events, forming the subject of an epic or dramatic poem.
(n.) Any story told to excite wonder; common talk; the theme of talk.
(n.) Fiction; untruth; falsehood.
(v. i.) To compose fables; hence, to write or speak fiction ; to write or utter what is not true.
(v. t.) To feign; to invent; to devise, and speak of, as true or real; to tell of falsely.
Typed by Anatole
Synonyms and Synonymous
n. [1]. Story (fictitious), tale, parable, APOLOGUE, ALLEGORY, myth, legend.[2]. Plot, action, series of events.[3]. Fiction, falsehood, lie, untruth, forgery, invention, fabrication, figment, coinage of the brain.
v. n. Feign, write fiction.
v. a. Feign, invent.
Typed by Audrey
Definition
n. a narrative in which things irrational and sometimes inanimate are for the purpose of moral instruction feigned to act and speak with human interests and passions: any tale in literary form not necessarily probable in its incidents intended to instruct or amuse: the plot or series of events in an epic or dramatic poem: a fiction or myth: a ridiculous story as in 'old wives' fables ' a falsehood: subject of common talk.—v.i. to tell fictitious tales: (obs.) to tell falsehoods.—v.t. to feign: to invent.—p.adj. Fā′bled mythical.—n. Fā′bler a writer or narrator of fictions.—adj. Fab′ular.—v.i. Fab′ulīse to write fables or to speak in fables.—ns. Fab′ulist one who invents fables; Fabulos′ity Fab′ulousness.—adj. Fab′ulous feigned false: related in fable: immense amazing.—adv. Fab′ulously.
Editor: Rochelle
Unserious Contents or Definition
To dream of reading or telling fables, denotes pleasant tasks and a literary turn of mind. To the young, it signifies romantic attachments. To hear, or tell, religious fables, denotes that the dreamer will become very devotional.
Edited by Josie
Examples
- Nobody supposed he cared anything about an old fable like that of Scylla and Charybdis. Mark Twain. The Innocents Abroad.
- In the hope of pleasing everyone, she took everyone's advice, and like the old man and his donkey in the fable suited nobody. Louisa May Alcott. Little Women.
- In these and her clean dress originated a fable that she was well to do in the world: one might say, for her station, rich. Charles Dickens. Our Mutual Friend.
- No hero of mythology or fable ever dared such dragons to rescue some captive goddess as did this dauntless champion of civilization. Frank Lewis Dyer. Edison, His Life and Inventions.
- She is the sun and I the wind, in the fable, and the sun managed the man best, you remember. Louisa May Alcott. Little Women.
- The choice of Hercules is a pretty fable; but Prodicus makes it easy work for the hero, as if the first resolves were enough. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
- People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre.
- Fable and imagination have traced back the origin of freemasonry to the Roman Empire, to the Pharaohs, the Temple of Solomon, the Tower of Babel, and even to the building of Noah’s ark. Various. The Wonder Book of Knowledge.
- God was not a blind force, and immortality was not a pretty fable, but a blessed fact. Louisa May Alcott. Little Women.
- That fable is unjust, which gives the superiority to the sun over the wind. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- Assuming an attitude, she began, La Ligue des Rats: fable de La Fontaine. Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre.
- On the night before the assault on Seringapatam, he was absurdly angry with me, and with others, for treating the whole thing as a fable. Wilkie Collins. The Moonstone.
- As making a comfortable provision for its subject which costs nobody anything, this class of fable has long been popular. Charles Dickens. Our Mutual Friend.
- In short, it was the moral of the old nursery fable: There was an old woman, and what do you think? Charles Dickens. Hard Times.
- All scout it as a fable. Charles Dickens. Our Mutual Friend.
- I remembered the ancient fables, in which human beings are described as dissolving away through weeping into ever-gushing fountains. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- They had their undercurrent of fables and superstitions, their phases of fear and abjection and sacrificial fury. H. G. Wells. The Outline of History_Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind.
- The fables we meet with in poems and romances put this entirely out of the question. David Hume. A Treatise of Human Nature.
Checked by Harlan