fable
pronunciation
How to pronounce fable in British English:
UK [ˈfeɪbl]
How to pronounce fable in American English:
US [ˈfeɪbl]
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- Noun:
- a deliberately false or improbable account
- a short moral story (often with animal characters)
- a story about mythical or supernatural beings or events
Word Origin
- fable
- fable: [13] The Indo-European base *bha- ‘speak’ has produced a wide range of English words, including (via Germanic) ban and (via Latin fārī ‘speak’) affable, confess, fairy, fame, fate, ineffable, infant, nefarious, and profess. Fable is a member of this latter group; it comes via Old French fable from Latin fābula ‘narrative, story’ (source also of English fabulous [15]), which was a derivative of fārī. Fib [17] is probably short for an earlier fible-fable ‘nonsense’, a fanciful reduplication of fable.=> affable, ban, confess, fabulous, fairy, fame, fate, fib, ineffable, infant, nefarious, profess, prophet
- fable (n.)
- c. 1300, "falsehood, fictitious narrative; a lie, pretense," from Old French fable "story, fable, tale; drama, play, fiction; lie, falsehood" (12c.), from Latin fabula "story, story with a lesson, tale, narrative, account; the common talk, news," literally "that which is told," from fari "speak, tell," from PIE root *bha- (2) "speak" (see fame (n.)). Restricted sense of "animal story" (early 14c.) comes from Aesop. In modern folklore terms, defined as "a short, comic tale making a moral point about human nature, usually through animal characters behaving in human ways" ["Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore"].
Antonym
Example
- 1. Mr kagan answers by way of a fable .
- 2. Here is the sequel to a well-known fable .
- 3. Yet life is more complex than in aesop 's fable .
- 4. What begins as an alluring fable ends as a full-on modernist nightmare .
- 5. Bahl tries to bring his catch-up theme to life with the fable of the plodding tortoise beating the flashy hare .