PARABLE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does parable mean? 

• PARABLE (noun)
  The noun PARABLE has 2 senses:

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

2. (New Testament) any of the stories told by Jesus to convey his religious message

  Familiarity information: PARABLE used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PARABLE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A short moral story (often with animal characters)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

allegory; apologue; fable; parable

Hypernyms ("parable" 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 "parable"):

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:

parabolic; parabolical (resembling or expressed by parables)

Sense 2

Meaning:

(New Testament) any of the stories told by Jesus to convey his religious message

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Context example:

the parable of the prodigal son

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

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

Domain category:

New Testament (the collection of books of the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, the Pauline and other epistles, and Revelation; composed soon after Christ's death; the second half of the Christian Bible)

Derivation:

parabolic; parabolical (resembling or expressed by parables)

 Context examples 

Hump, do you know the parable of the sower who went forth to sow?

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

I have myself—I tell it you without parable—been a worldly, dissipated, restless man; and I believe I have found the instrument for my cure in—He paused: the birds went on carolling, the leaves lightly rustling.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)