fiction

From Middle English ficcioun, from Old French ficcion (“dissimulation, ruse, invention”), from Latin fictiō (“a making, fashioning, a feigning, a rhetorical or legal fiction”), from fingō (“to form, mold, shape, devise, feign”). Displaced native Old English lēasspell (literally “false story”).

• enPR: fĭk′-shən, IPA^(key): /ˈfɪk.ʃən/

• Audio (US):

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• Hyphenation: fic‧tion

• Rhymes: -ɪkʃən

fiction (countable and uncountable, plural fictions)

1. (literature) Literary type using invented or imaginative writing, instead of real facts, usually written as prose.

   I am a great reader of fiction.

   the fiction section of the library

2. A verbal or written account that is not based on actual events (often intended to mislead).

   The company’s accounts contained a number of blatant fictions.

   The butler’s account of the crime was pure fiction.

   separate the fact from the fiction

   • 1963 June, G. Freeman Allen, “The success of diesel-hydraulics on the German Federal Railway”, in Modern Railways, page 390:

     […] in view of the facts—and some fictions—recently circulated in this country about the general performance of high-powered diesel-hydraulics of B.R., […] .

3. (law) A legal fiction.

• fabrication
• figment

• documentary
• fact
• non-fiction
• truth

• science fiction
• speculative fiction

• → Irish: ficsean
• → Scottish Gaelic: ficsean

• “fiction”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “fiction”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “fiction”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• Raymond Williams (1983), “Fiction”, in Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, revised American edition, New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, published 1985, →ISBN, page 134.

Inherited from Old French, borrowed from Latin fictiōnem (accusative of fictiō).

• IPA^(key): /fik.sjɔ̃/

• Audio:

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• Audio (Switzerland (Valais)):

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• Audio (France (Vosges)):

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• Audio (France (Vosges)):

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• Audio (France (Lyon)):

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fiction f (plural fictions)

1. fiction

• fictif
• science-fiction

• “fiction”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012