FICTIONAL CHARACTER

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does fictional character mean? 

• FICTIONAL CHARACTER (noun)
  The noun FICTIONAL CHARACTER has 1 sense:

1. an imaginary person represented in a work of fiction (play or film or story)

  Familiarity information: FICTIONAL CHARACTER used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FICTIONAL CHARACTER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An imaginary person represented in a work of fiction (play or film or story)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

character; fictional character; fictitious character

Context example:

she is the main character in the novel

Hypernyms ("fictional character" is a kind of...):

imaginary being; imaginary creature (a creature of the imagination; a person that exists only in legends or myths or fiction)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "fictional character"):

agonist; protagonist (the principal character in a work of fiction)

Instance hyponyms:

Uncle Tom (a servile black character in a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe)

Little John (legendary follower of Robin Hood; noted for his size and strength)

Houyhnhnm (one of a race of intelligent horses who ruled the Yahoos in a novel by Jonathan Swift)

Emile (the boy whose upbringing was described by Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

Ali Baba (the fictional woodcutter who discovered that 'open sesame' opened a cave in the Arabian Nights' Entertainment)

Snoopy (a fictional beagle in a comic strip drawn by Charles Schulz)

Sinbad; Sinbad the Sailor (in the Arabian Nights a hero who tells of the fantastic adventures he had in his voyages)

Simon Legree (the cruel slave dealer in an anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe)

Holmes; Sherlock Holmes (a fictitious detective in stories by A. Conan Doyle)

Uncle Sam (a personification of the United States government)

Little Red Riding Hood (a girl in a fairy tale who meets a wolf while going to visit her grandmother)

Uncle Remus (the fictional storyteller of tales written in the Black Vernacular and set in the South; the tales were first collected and published in book form in 1880)

Tom Sawyer (the boy hero of a novel by Mark Twain)

Tarzan; Tarzan of the Apes (a man raised by apes who was the hero of a series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs)

Ruritanian (an imaginary inhabitant of Ruritania)

Rip van Winkle (the title character in a story by Washington Irving about a man who sleeps for 20 years and doesn't recognize the world when he wakens)

Huck Finn; Huckleberry Finn (a mischievous boy in a novel by Mark Twain)

Pluto (a cartoon character created by Walt Disney)

Pierrot (a male character in French pantomime; usually dressed in white with a whitened face)

Pied Piper; Pied Piper of Hamelin (the title character in a German folk tale and in a poem by Robert Browning)

Sweeney Todd; Todd (fictional character in a play by George Pitt; a barber who murdered his customers)

Merlin ((Arthurian legend) the magician who acted as King Arthur's advisor)

Lancelot; Sir Lancelot ((Arthurian legend) one of the knights of the Round Table; friend of King Arthur until (according to some versions of the legend) he became the lover of Arthur's wife Guinevere)

Guenevere; Guinevere ((Arthurian legend) wife of King Arthur; in some versions of the legend she became Lancelot's lover and that led to the end of the Knights of the Round Table)

Gawain; Sir Gawain ((Arthurian legend) a nephew of Arthur and one of the knights of the Round Table)

Galahad; Sir Galahad ((Arthurian legend) the most virtuous knight of the Round Table; was able to see the Holy Grail)

Arthur; King Arthur (a legendary king of the Britons (possibly based on a historical figure in the 6th century but the story has been retold too many times to be sure); said to have led the Knights of the Round Table at Camelot)

Yahoo (one of a race of brutes resembling men but subject to the Houyhnhnms in a novel by Jonathan Swift)

Walter Mitty (fictional character created by James Thurber who daydreams about his adventures and triumphs)

Trilby (singer in a novel by George du Maurier who was under the control of the hypnotist Svengali)

Peter Pan (the main character in a play and novel by J. M. Barrie; a boy who won't grow up)

Svengali (the musician in a novel by George du Maurier who controls Trilby's singing hypnotically)

Scaramouch; Scaramouche (a stock character in commedia dell'arte depicted as a boastful coward)

Iseult; Isolde ((Middle Ages) the bride of the king of Cornwall who (according to legend) fell in love with the king's nephew (Tristan) after they mistakenly drank a love potion that left them eternally in love with each other)

Tristan; Tristram ((Middle Ages) the nephew of the king of Cornwall who (according to legend) fell in love with his uncle's bride (Iseult) after they mistakenly drank a love potion that left them eternally in love with each other)

Shylock (a merciless usurer in a play by Shakespeare)

Rumpelstiltskin (a dwarf in one of the fairy stories of the brothers Grimm; tells a woman he will not hold her to a promise if she can guess his name and when she discovers it he is so furious that he destroys himself)

Robinson Crusoe (the hero of Daniel Defoe's novel about a shipwrecked English sailor who survives on a small tropical island)

Robin Hood (legendary English outlaw of the 12th century; said to have robbed the rich to help the poor)

Raskolnikov; Rodya Raskolnikov (a fictional character in Dostoevsky's novel 'Crime and Punishment'; he kills old women because he believes he is beyond the bounds of good or evil)

Cheshire cat (a fictional cat with a broad fixed smile on its face; created by Lewis Carroll)

Father Brown (a Catholic priest who was the hero of detective stories by G. K. Chesterton)

Falstaff; Sir John Falstaff (a dissolute character in Shakespeare's plays)

Fagin (a villainous Jew in a novel by Charles Dickens)

El Cid (the hero of a Spanish epic poem from the 12th century)

Don Quixote (the hero of a romance by Cervantes; chivalrous but impractical)

Dracula (fictional vampire in a gothic horror novel by Bram Stoker)

Colonel Blimp (a pompous reactionary cartoon character created by Sir David Low)

Cinderella (a fictional young girl who is saved from her stepmother and stepsisters by her fairy godmother and a handsome prince)

Chicken Little (a fictional character who was hit on the head with an acorn and believed that the sky was falling)

Faust; Faustus (an alchemist of German legend who sold his soul to Mephistopheles in exchange for knowledge)

John Henry (hero of American folk tales; portrayed as an enormously strong black man who worked on the railroads and died from exhaustion after winning a contest with a steam drill)

Bunyan; Paul Bunyan (a legendary giant lumberjack of the north woods of the United States and Canada)

Brer Rabbit (the fictional character of a rabbit who appeared in tales supposedly told by Uncle Remus and first published in 1880)

Bond; James Bond (British secret operative 007 in novels by Ian Fleming)

Bluebeard ((fairytale) a monstrous villain who marries seven women; he kills the first six for disobedience)

Beowulf (the legendary hero of an anonymous Old English epic poem composed in the early 8th century; he slays a monster and becomes king but dies fighting a dragon)

Beatrice (the woman who guided Dante through Paradise in the Divine Comedy)

Babar (an imaginary elephant that appears in a series of French books for children)

Argonaut ((Greek mythology) one of the heroes who sailed with Jason in search of the Golden Fleece)

King Lear; Lear (the hero of William Shakespeare's tragedy who was betrayed and mistreated by two of his scheming daughters)

Perry Mason (fictional detective in novels by Erle Stanley Gardner)

Pantaloon (a character in the commedia dell'arte; portrayed as a foolish old man)

Pangloss (an incurable optimist in a satire by Voltaire)

Othello (the hero of William Shakespeare's tragedy who would not trust his wife)

Mr. Moto (Japanese sleuth created by John Marquand)

Mother Goose (the imaginary author of a collection of nursery rhymes)

Micawber; Wilkins Micawber (fictional character created by Charles Dickens; an eternal optimist)

Marlowe; Philip Marlowe (tough cynical detective (one of the early detective heroes in American fiction) created by Raymond Chandler)

Lilliputian (a 6-inch tall inhabitant of Lilliput in a novel by Jonathan Swift)

Aladdin (in the Arabian Nights a boy who acquires a magic lamp from which he can summon a genie)

Kilroy (a nonexistent person popularized by American servicemen during World War II)

Commissaire Maigret; Inspector Maigret (a fictional detective in novels by Georges Simenon)

Iago (the villain in William Shakespeare's tragedy who tricked Othello into murdering his wife)

Captain Horatio Hornblower; Horatio Hornblower (a fictional English admiral during the Napoleonic Wars in novels written by C. S. Forester)

Hamlet (the hero of William Shakespeare's tragedy who hoped to avenge the murder of his father)

Gulliver (a fictional Englishman who travels to the imaginary land of Lilliput in a satirical novel by Jonathan Swift)

Goofy (a cartoon character created by Walt Disney)

Frankenstein; Frankenstein's monster (the monster created by Frankenstein in a gothic novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (the creator's name is commonly used to refer to his creation))

Frankenstein (the fictional Swiss scientist who was the protagonist in a gothic novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley; he created a monster from parts of corpses)