fiction

Borrowed from Old French ficcion (“dissimulation, ruse, invention”), from Latin fictionem, accusative of fictio (“a making, fashioning, a feigning, a rhetorical or legal fiction”), from fingere (“to form, mold, shape, devise, feign”).

• enPR: fĭk′-shən, IPA^(key): /ˈfɪk.ʃən/

• Audio (US)

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• Hyphenation: fic‧tion

• Rhymes: -ɪkʃən

fiction (countable and uncountable, plural fictions)

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

   The company’s accounts contained a number of blatant fictions.

   I am a great reader of fiction.

2. (uncountable) A verbal or written account that is not based on actual events (often intended to mislead).

   The butler’s account of the crime was pure fiction.

3. (law) A legal fiction.

• fabrication
• figment

• documentary
• fact
• non-fiction
• truth

• literary type

• science fiction
• speculative fiction

• fictitious
• fictional
• non-fiction

• fiction section

• fiction in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• fiction in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• fiction at OneLook Dictionary Search
• "fiction" in Raymond Williams, Keywords (revised), 1983, Fontana Press, page 134.

From Old French, borrowed from Latin fictionem (nominative of fictio).

• IPA^(key): /fik.sjɔ̃/

• audio

  (file)

fiction f (plural fictions)

1. fiction

• fictif
• science-fiction

• “fiction” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).