fiction

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

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

   I am a great reader of fiction.

2. 2
   noun

   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.

3. 3
   noun

   a literary work based on the imagination and not necessarily on fact

4. 4
   noun

   a deliberately false or improbable account

5. 5
   noun

   A legal fiction.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dʰeyǵʰ- Proto-Indo-European *dʰi-né-ǵʰ-ti Proto-Italic *θingō Proto-Italic *fingōder. Latin fingō Proto-Indo-European *-tisder. Proto-Italic *-tjō Latin -tiō Latin fictiōder. Old French ficcionbor. Middle English ficcioun English 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”).