fable

Etymology

From Middle English, from Old French fable, from Latin fabula, from fā(rī) (“to speak, say”) + -bula (“instrumental suffix”). See Ban, and compare fabulous, fame.

Pronunciation

• enPR: fā′bəl, IPA^(key): /ˈfeɪbəl/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪbəl
• Hyphenation: fa‧ble

Noun

fable (plural fables)

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

   Synonym: morality play

2. Any story told to excite wonder; common talk; the theme of talk.
   • 1 Timothy 4:7,

     Old wives' fables.

   • (Can we date this quote?), Alfred Tennyson, (Please provide the book title or journal name):

     We grew / The fable of the city where we dwelt.

   Synonym: legend

3. Fiction; untruth; falsehood.
   • (Can we date this quote?), Joseph Addison, (Please provide the book title or journal name):

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

4. The plot, story, or connected series of events forming the subject of an epic or dramatic poem.
   • (Can we date this quote?), Dryden, (Please provide the book title or journal name):

     The moral is the first business of the poet; this being formed, he contrives such a design or fable as may be most suitable to the moral.

Verb

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.
   • 1591, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 1, Act IV, Scene 2,

     He fables not; I hear the enemy:

     Out, some light horsemen, and peruse their wings.

   • 1706, Matthew Prior, “An Ode, Humbly Inscribed to the Queen,” stanza 17, in Samuel Johnson (editor), The Works of the English Poets, London, 1779, Volume 30, p. 254,

     Vain now the tales which fabling poets tell,

     That wavering Conquest still desires to rove!

     In Marlborough’s camp the goddess knows to dwell:

     Long as the hero’s life remains her love.

   • 1852, Matthew Arnold, Empedocles on Etna, Act II, in Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems, London: B. Fellowes, p. 50,

     He fables, yet speaks truth.

2. (transitive, archaic) To make up; to devise, and speak of, as true or real; to tell of falsely; to recount in the form of a fable.
   • 1674, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book VI, lines 288-292,

     […] err not, that so shall end

     The strife which thou callest evil, but we style

     The strife of glory; which we mean to win,

     Or turn this Heaven itself into the Hell

     Thou fablest […]

   • 1691, Arthur Gorges (translator), The Wisdom of the Ancients by Francis Bacon (1609), London, “Cassandra, or, Divination,”

     The Poets Fable, That Apollo being enamoured of Cassandra, was by her many shifts and cunning slights still deluded in his Desire […]

   Synonyms: make up, invent, feign, devise

Further reading

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

Anagrams

• befal

Etymology

From Old French fable, from Latin fabula.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fabl/

• Audio

  (file)

Noun

fable f (plural fables)

1. fable, story

Further reading

• “fable” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Etymology

From Latin fabula.

Noun

fable f (oblique plural fables, nominative singular fable, nominative plural fables)

1. fable, story
   • circa 1250, Rutebeuf, Ci encoumence la lections d'ypocrisie et d'umilité:

     Ne vos wel faire longue fable

     I don't want to tell you a long story

Verb

fable

1. First-person singular (yo) present subjunctive form of fablar.
2. Formal second-person singular (usted) present subjunctive form of fablar.
3. Third-person singular (él, ella, also used with usted^?) present subjunctive form of fablar.
4. Formal second-person singular (usted) imperative form of fablar.