-
Fable
Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral lesson (a “moral”), which may at the end be added explicitly as a pithy maxim or saying.
A fable differs from a parable in that the latter excludes animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as actors that assume speech or other powers of humankind.
Usage has not always been so clearly distinguished. In the King James Version of the New Testament, “μῦθος” (“mythos”) was rendered by the translators as “fable” in the First Epistle to Timothy, the Second Epistle to Timothy, the Epistle to Titus and the First Epistle of Peter.A person who writes fables is a fabulist.
-
Fable (noun)
A Aesop’s Fables.
“morality play”
-
Fable (noun)
Any story told to excite wonder; common talk; the theme of talk.
“legend”
-
Fable (noun)
Fiction; untruth; falsehood.
-
Fable (noun)
The plot, story, or connected series of events forming the subject of an epic or dramatic poem.
-
Fable (verb)
To compose fables; hence, to write or speak fiction; to write or utter what is not true.
-
Fable (verb)
To make up; to devise, and speak of, as true or real; to tell of falsely; to recount in the form of a fable.
“make up|invent|feign|devise”
-
Folktale (noun)
A tale or story that is part of the oral tradition of a people or a place.