FABLE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does fable mean? 

• FABLE (noun)
  The noun FABLE has 3 senses:

1. a deliberately false or improbable account

2. a short moral story (often with animal characters)

3. a story about mythical or supernatural beings or events

  Familiarity information: FABLE used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FABLE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A deliberately false or improbable account

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

fable; fabrication; fiction

Hypernyms ("fable" is a kind of...):

falsehood; falsity; untruth (a false statement)

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

canard (a deliberately misleading fabrication)

Derivation:

fabulist (a person who tells or invents fables)

fabulous (barely credible)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A short moral story (often with animal characters)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

allegory; apologue; fable; parable

Hypernyms ("fable" is a kind of...):

story (a piece of fiction that narrates a chain of related events)

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

Aesop's fables (a collection of fables believed to have been written by the Greek storyteller Aesop)

Instance hyponyms:

Pilgrim's Progress (an allegory written by John Bunyan in 1678)

Derivation:

fabulist (a person who tells or invents fables)

fabulous (based on or told of in traditional stories; lacking factual basis or historical validity)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A story about mythical or supernatural beings or events

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

fable; legend

Hypernyms ("fable" is a kind of...):

story (a piece of fiction that narrates a chain of related events)

Domain member category:

grail; Holy Grail; Sangraal ((legend) chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper)

King Arthur's Round Table; Round Table ((legend) the circular table for King Arthur and his knights)

hagiology (literature narrating the lives (and legends) of the saints)

Midas ((Greek legend) the greedy king of Phrygia who Dionysus gave the power to turn everything he touched into gold)

Sisyphus ((Greek legend) a king in ancient Greece who offended Zeus and whose punishment was to roll a huge boulder to the top of a steep hill; each time the boulder neared the top it rolled back down and Sisyphus was forced to start again)

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)

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)

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

Arthurian legend (the legend of King Arthur and his court at Camelot)

Derivation:

fabulist (a person who tells or invents fables)

fabulous (based on or told of in traditional stories; lacking factual basis or historical validity)

 Context examples 

God was not a blind force, and immortality was not a pretty fable, but a blessed fact.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Captain Smollett, began the doctor with a smile, did ever you hear the fable of the mountain and the mouse?

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Not that Catherine was always stupid—by no means; she learnt the fable of “The Hare and Many Friends” as quickly as any girl in England.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of truth in the wildest fable.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The power of Treaty may yet prove a vast engine of enlargement, when the Monroe doctrine takes its true place as a political fable.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

That it might the better escape notice, he had invented a fiction that it belonged to Mr. Blackboy, and was to be left with Barkis till called for; a fable he had elaborately written on the lid, in characters now scarcely legible.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

She is the sun and I the wind, in the fable, and the sun managed the man best, you remember.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

You'll excuse me, I dare say, but you remind me of that fable.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Assuming an attitude, she began, "La Ligue des Rats: fable de La Fontaine."

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Concerning the one in question, therefore, I have only to add—aware that the rules of composition forbid the introduction of a character not connected with my fable—that this was the very gentleman whose negligent servant left behind him that collection of washing-bills, resulting from a long visit at Northanger, by which my heroine was involved in one of her most alarming adventures.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)