figment

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English figment,^[2][3] borrowed from Latin figmentum (“something formed or fashioned, a creation”),^[4][5][6] from fig-, the stem of fingō (“to shape, form; to devise, feign”), and the suffix -mentum.^[3][6][7] The Latin verb is traced to Proto-Indo-European *dheigh- (“to form, build”),^[8][5] and the Latin noun is related to figūra (“shape”), the source of figure.^[5] English feign and fiction go back to the same verb.^[9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

A literary myth or fable, a deceitful practice, or a false doctrine: "The figmentes of poetes", in a Middle English translation of Higden's Polychronicon in a manuscript of before 1475, perhaps composed before 1425.^[2][6][4] Hoad calls the word rare before the late 16th century.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The first English uses are all about things invented in words: fables, frauds and doctrines.^[2][6] Late in the 16th century the word also took up the concrete Latin sense of something moulded, an image or model, which lasted only from 1592 to 1664.^[6][12] The current sense, something that exists only in the mind, dates from the early 17th century;^[9][12] the OED's first quotation is from T. Gataker in 1624, and it records the phrase figment of the imagination under this sense.^[6] Johnson (1755) defined the word as "an invention; a fiction; the idea feigned".^[13]

Timeline

• before 1475 – an invented story, fraud or doctrine, in the translated Polychronicon.^[2][6] Barnhart dates the same text to probably before 1425.^[4]
• 1592 – something moulded or fashioned, an image or model (obsolete after 1664).^[6][12]
• 1624 – something that exists only as a notion of the mind.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. Something that exists only in the mind; something fabricated or imagined, especially in a figment of the imagination: The second witness turned out to be a figment of the reporter's imagination.^[14][3][6]
2. An invented statement, story or doctrine.^[12][6]
3. (obsolete, 1592–1664) Something moulded or fashioned, such as an image or model.^[6][12]

Word family

• figmental

Related words

• feign
• fiction
• fictitious
• figure
• dough
• faint

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins