fiction

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈfɪk.ʃən/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English ficcioun, borrowed from Old French fiction and directly from Latin fictiō (“a fashioning, feigning”),^[2][3][4] a noun of action from the past participle of fingere “to shape, form, devise, feign”, originally “to knead”,^[2][3] from Proto-Indo-European *dheigh- (“to form, build”).^[2] It is related to feign, figment, fictitious and dough.^[5][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Something imaginatively invented: 1398 in the OED, about 1412 in Barnhart, the early 15th century in Etymonline.^[6][3][2]

Semantic evolution

Feigning or deceit is from 1483, now obsolete.^[6] Prose works of the imagination are from the 1590s (1599 in the OED), at first often including plays and poems,^[2][6] and the narrower sense, novels and short stories, is by the early 19th century.^[2] The legal sense, a fiction of law, is from the 1580s.^[2] A single work of fiction, a novel, is from 1875.^[6] The AHD notes that “the latest fiction” now usually means the newest novels, not the latest lie.^[7] Fictional is from 1843 and fictitious from 1615.^[3]

Timeline

• 1398 – something invented.^[6]
• 1483 – deceit.^[6]
• 1580s – a legal fiction.^[2]
• 1599 – imaginative literature.^[6]
• 1875 – a novel.^[6]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. Books and stories about imaginary people and events, especially novels and short stories.
2. Something invented or untrue.
3. (law) Something assumed to be true for legal purposes even if it is not.

Word family

• fictional
• fictionally
• fictionality
• fictioneer
• fictionist
• fictionize
• fictitious

Related words

• feign
• figment
• dough

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ Pearsall, Judy, ed. (1998), The New Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin