fictitious

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin fictīcius (“artificial, counterfeit”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} with the English suffix -ous in place of the Latin ending;^[2][7] Etymonline traces the spelling to Medieval Latin fictitius, a medieval misspelling of the Latin word.^[3] The Latin adjective is formed from fictus (“feigned, false”), the past participle of fingō (“to shape, form, devise, feign”),^[3][4][6][5] with the suffix that English has as -itious.^[2][8][9] The Latin verb is from Proto-Indo-European *dheigh- (“to form, build”),^[3] the root of dough.^[6] It is related to fiction.^[4][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Counterfeit, imitation, not genuine: 1615, in H. Crooke, who distinguishes natural precious stones from fictitious ones.^[2][8] Etymonline dates the sense "artificial, counterfeit" to the 1610s,^[3] Dictionary.com to 1605–15,^[9] and Merriam-Webster's Unabridged gives about 1633.^[6]

Semantic evolution

The sense "existing only in the imagination, unreal" followed in 1621, in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy,^[2][10] and soon after, before 1634, the word was used of a name or character that was feigned or assumed.^[2] From 1660 it also meant arbitrarily made up, without rational grounds.^[2][10] Johnson (1755) gave the senses "counterfeit; false; not genuine" and "feigned; imaginary", quoting Dryden for the first.^[11] The link with literary fiction, "of or belonging to fiction", is recorded only from 1773,^[2][10] and since 1837 the word was also used of something that exists by a legal or conventional fiction.^[2][10] A short-lived sense, artificial as opposed to natural, appears in Boyle in 1686.^[2]

Timeline

• 1615 – counterfeit, sham, not genuine.^[2]
• 1621 – imaginary, existing only in the imagination.^[2] Etymonline dates this sense to the 1620s.^[3]
• before 1634 – of a name or character, feigned or assumed.^[2]
• 1660 – arbitrarily devised, without rational grounds.^[2]
• 1686 – artificial as opposed to natural (now obsolete).^[2]
• 1773 – of or belonging to fiction.^[2]
• 1837 – existing by a legal or conventional fiction.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Not real or true; invented, especially in order to deceive: He booked the room under a fictitious name.^[4][12][13]
2. Of, relating to or found in fiction; imaginary: The novel sets fictitious characters beside real politicians.^{[4][12][13][6]}
3. Assumed or accepted by convention or as a hypothesis, though known not to be real, as a legal fiction is.^[6][2]
4. Not genuine; counterfeit or sham.^[12][2][11]

Word family

• fictitiously
• fictitiousness
• fictitious person
• fictitious force

Related words

• fiction
• feign
• fictive
• figment
• dough
• -itious

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ a b c d Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
11. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ a b Pearsall, Judy, ed. (1998), The New Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford: Clarendon Press