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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

fable.

A fictitious narrative intended to enforce some useful truth or precept, usually with animals, etc. as characters; an apologue. Prototypically, Aesop's Fables.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈfeɪbəl/
  1. A fictitious narrative intended to enforce some useful truth or precept, usually with animals, etc. as characters; an apologue. Prototypically, Aesop's Fables.

  2. Any story told to excite wonder; common talk; the theme of talk.

  3. Fiction; untruth; falsehood.

  4. The plot, story, or connected series of events forming the subject of an epic or dramatic poem.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English, borrowed from Old French fable, from Latin fābula, from fārī (“to speak, say”) + -bula (“instrumental suffix”). See ban, and compare fabulous, fame. Doublet of fabula.

verb/ˈfeɪbəl/
  1. To compose fables; hence, to write or speak fiction; to write or utter what is not true.

    archaic · intransitive
  2. To make up; to devise, and speak of, as true or real; to tell of falsely; to recount in the form of a fable.

    archaic · transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English, borrowed from Old French fable, from Latin fābula, from fārī (“to speak, say”) + -bula (“instrumental suffix”). See ban, and compare fabulous, fame. Doublet of fabula.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.