fable Definition
fa·ble (fā′bəl)
noun
- a fictitious story meant to teach a moral lesson: the characters are usually talking animals
- a myth or legend
- a story that is not true; falsehood
- Archaic the plot of a literary work
Etymology: ME < OFr < L fabula, a story < fari, to speak: see fame
intransitive verb, transitive verb -·bled, -·bling
to write or tell (fables, legends, or falsehoods)
fable Related Forms
fa′·bler noun
fable Synonyms
fable Usage Examples
Preposition: of
- man: PICKTHAL: That, when Our revelations are recited unto him, he saith: Mere fables of the men of old.
- love: More than a half century later, this fable of love and loneliness has lost none of its power.
Possessives
child: Can you think of a famous children's fable about someone or something being different, being the odd-one-out?
Converse of object
- devise: Bankers, men of a more positive nature, devised a specious fable.
- write: He wrote a fantastic fable which he wanted to read to the rest of the class.
- tell: The poet Hesiod tells a fable of Zeus creating a race of bronze men from Ashes.
- know: Children write a play script based on a well known fable or story.
- illustrate: Sir John Tenniel, who was already famous for his cartoons in Punch, a comic for adults, illustrated the fable.
- create: Even using such broad strokes, Fridriksson could have created a more compelling fable.
Adjective modifier
- timeless: It's a timeless, paranoid fable that grabs at the emotions, negates the intellect, and reduces everything to absolutes.
- moral: We have even the same inset moral fable, in the form of the man of the hill's narrative.
- comic: The play also just misses the tone of comic fable that Williams intended to give it an air of innocence.
- ancient: Cosmos, according to the ancient fables of the Greeks, emerged from the uterine gulf of chaos.
- classic: A twist on classic monster fables, CURSED unleashes ancient omens into the modern world.
- Chinese: The story told in Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle is borrowed from an ancient Chinese fable and echoes the Judgment of Solomon.
Noun used with modifier
- animal: The feature-length ' Tale of the Fox ' , Starewicz ' best-known work, is a technically audacious, gleefully wicked medieval animal fable.
- beast: What else is this story, beside a beast fable?
- adult: A warning for the dehumanized Japanese society, the film has the feel of an adult fable.
- morality: The Soldier's Tale is a morality fable in which the Devil appears in different guises.
- morning: True Lies The Garden An early morning fable for the post-secular, post-everything generation.

