FABLE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Fable

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/fˈeɪbəl/ Listen

noun

Fable 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. "Jotham's fable of the trees is the oldest extant." Note: A fable may have talking animals anthropomorphically cast as humans representing different character types, sometimes illustrating some moral principle; as, Aesop's Fables.

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

Any story told to excite wonder; common talk; the theme of talk. "Old wives' fables. " "We grew The fable of the city where we dwelt."

Fiction; untruth; falsehood. "It would look like a fable to report that this gentleman gives away a great fortune by secret methods."

verb

Fable v. t. To feign; to invent; to devise, and speak of, as true or real; to tell of falsely. "The hell thou fablest."

Fable v. i. (past & past part. fabled; pres. part. fabling) To compose fables; hence, to write or speak fiction; to write or utter what is not true. "He Fables not." "Vain now the tales which fabling poets tell." "He fables, yet speaks truth."

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Etymology of 'Fable'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Fable" Quotes from Famous Books

... of clear colour: the little girls working by the luminous window with the muslin curtains and the hanging pot of greenstuff; the stiff-backed woman moving about with plates and dishes in her hands; the invalid wheezing on the little red calico sofa. The past was still reality, and the present a fable. It didn't seem true: lying with a man who was still strange to her; rising when she pleased; getting even her meals when she pleased. She could not realize the fact that she had left for ever her quiet home in the Potteries, and was travelling about ...

— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... time in inquiring after that which is past and gone so many ages since, like one that shoots away an arrow to find out another that was lost before. He fetches things out of dust and ruins, like the fable of the chemical plant raised out of its own ashes. He values one old invention, that is lost and never to be recovered, before all the new ones in the world, though never so useful. The whole business of his life is the same with his ...

— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... The fable of the Quivira, the golden city marked now by the ruins of the Piro pueblo of Tabiri, south of the salt-deposits of the Manzano, is still potent in Arizona and New Mexico to lure the treasure-seeker. Three hundred and fifty years ago it inspired a march across the plains ...

— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... blame him?" asked Thad. "Makes me think of the old fable, when the lion and the donkey went hunting together. The lion took up his station at the mouth of the cave where some goats had hidden, while the donkey went in; and made all sorts of terrible noises, braying. So the ...

— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... Ballads. The event narrated is a legend of the house of Cassilis (Kennedy), but is wholly unhistorical. "Sir John Faa," in the fable, is aided by Gypsies, but, apparently, is not one of the Earls of Egypt, on whom Mr. Crockett's novel, The Raiders, may be consulted. The ballad was first printed, as far as is known, ...

— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang

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