Oxford English Dictionary | The definitive record of the English

language

fiction, n.
Pronunciation:  Brit.  /ˈfɪkʃn/, U.S.  /ˈfɪkʃən/
Forms:  Middle English ficcion, Middle English–1500s fyccion, fycyon, fytion(e), 1500s fixione ...
Frequency (in current use): 
Origin: A borrowing from French. Etymon: French fiction.
Etymology: < French fiction (= Provençal fiction , ficxio , Spanish ficcion ), < Latin ...

†1.

 a. The action of fashioning or imitating. Obsolete.  

1607   E. Topsell Hist. Foure-footed Beastes 534   In some partes of Germany..it [sc. the shrew] is
called..Zissmuss, from the fiction of his voice.
1713   Ld. Shaftesbury Notion Hist. Draught Judgm. Hercules v. 37   The..Art of Painting..surpassing, by so
many Degrees..all other human Fiction or imitative Art.

 b. Arbitrary invention.  

1615   T. Adams White Deuill (ed. 4) 83   The king hauing made positiue lawes..disdaines that a Groome
shold..annull those, to..aduance other of his owne fiction.
1790   E. Burke Refl. Revol. in France 225   We have never dreamt that parliaments had any right..to force a
currency of their own fiction in the place of that which is  real.

 c. concrete. That which is fashioned or framed; a device, a fabric.  

1579   S. Gosson Schoole of Abuse f. 32   The other syttes drawing Mathematicall fictions.
1610   J. Guillim Display of Heraldrie iii. v. 99   Thunder and Lightning..they haue in..their imaginarie fiction
conioined.
1785   W. Cowper Task i. 416   Renounce the odours of the open field For the unscented fictions of the loom.

†2. Feigning, counterfeiting; deceit, dissimulation, pretence. Obsolete.  

1483   W. Caxton tr. Caton A iv b   He that sheweth him a frende by fyction and faynyng for to dysceyue him.
1502   tr. Ordynarye of Crysten Men (de Worde) i. iii. sig. d.iiii   Wtout hauynge ficcion in his worde.
?1533   G. Du Wes Introductorie for to lerne Frenche sig. Ti   I say without fiction.
1605   F. Bacon Of Aduancem. Learning i. sig. I4   A man of the purest goodnesse without all fiction or
 
affectation.
1610   Bible (Douay) II. Wisd. vii. 13   Which I lerned without fiction.

 3.
 a. The action of ‘feigning’ or inventing imaginary incidents, existences,  

states of things, etc., whether for the purpose of deception or otherwise.

The reproachful sense [= ‘fabrication’] is merely contextual.

1605   F. Bacon Of Aduancem. Learning i. sig. F2v   Hee that will easily beleeue..will as easily augment
 
rumors..so great an affinitie hath fiction and beleefe.
1651   T. Hobbes Leviathan ii. xxvii. 151   To be pleased in the fiction of that, which would please a man if it
were reall, is a Passion..adhærent to the Nature..of man.
1708   Ld. Shaftesbury Let. conc. Enthusiasm 7   Truth is the most powerful thing in the World, since even
Fiction it self must be govern'd by it.
1749   D. Hartley Observ. Man ii. i. 39   The extreme Mischiefe which Fiction and Fraud occasion in the
World.
1840   C. Thirlwall Hist. Greece VII. 99   The scene may appear to us so memorable, as to have afforded
temptation for fiction.

 b. That which, or something that, is imaginatively invented; feigned  

existence, event, or state of things; invention as opposed to fact.

1495   Trevisa's Bartholomeus De Proprietatibus Rerum (de Worde) i. sig. Aij/2   Deuowte doctours of
Theologye..wysely..vse natural philosophye & morall and poetes in ther ficcions & feyned Informacyons.
1509   S. Hawes Pastime of Pleasure Proem v   Whose [i.e. Lydgate's] fatall fictions are yet permanent,
Grounded on reason.
1586   W. Warner Æneidos in Albions Eng. sig. Oi   The waues sollycited (a Poeticall fiction) by the wife of
Iupiter.
1612   T. Wilson Christian Dict. 375   The popish Priest-hood is an immaginary and blasphemous fixion.
a1616   W. Shakespeare Twelfth Night (1623) iii. iv. 126   If this were plaid vpon a stage now, I could
 
condemne it as an improbable fiction .
1798   J. Ferriar Illustr. Sterne 251   Fiction is always more feeble than truth.
1850   R. W. Emerson Shakspeare in Representative Men v. 209   Few real men have left such distinct
characters as these fictions.
1872   H. Spencer Princ. Psychol. (ed. 2) II. viii. iii. 536   Until fact..has become clearly distinguished from
fiction.
1876   W. E. Gladstone Homeric Synchronism 34   The fictions of the Virgilian age establish no presumption
adverse to it.

 c. A statement or narrative proceeding from mere invention; such  

statements collectively.

1599   F. Thynne Animaduersions (1875) 32   Because you shall not thinke this anye fixione of my owne.
1611   M. Smith in Bible (King James) Transl. Pref. 1   What a fiction or fable was deuised.
1660   T. Stanley Hist. Philos. III. v. 221   Let us cast away all fiction.
1719   D. Defoe Life Robinson Crusoe 318   Though this was all a Fiction of his own, yet it had its desired Effect.
1781   E. Gibbon Decline & Fall II. xxxvi. 326   Such an anecdote may be rejected as an improbable fiction.
1849   T. B. Macaulay Hist. Eng. I. 581   The messengers..might..have related mere fictions without incurring
the penalties of perjury.
 1873   J. G. Holland Arthur Bonnicastle i. 17   He had been playing off a fiction upon me.
 4.

 a. The species of literature which is concerned with the narration of  

imaginary events and the portraiture of imaginary characters; fictitious

composition. Now usually, prose novels and stories collectively; the
composition of works of this class.

1599   R. Linche tr. V. Cartari (title)    The fountaine of ancient fiction.

a1780   J. Harris Philol. Inq. (1781) ii. vi. 142   Dramatic fiction copies real life.
1829   E. Bulwer-Lytton Devereux II. iv. vi. 226   Old people like history better than fiction.
1841   E. W. Lane tr. Thousand & One Nights I. 65   The Arabs..enjoy a remarkable advantage over us in the
composition of works of fiction.
1862   J. H. Burton Book-hunter (1863) 10   The existing school of French fiction.

 b. A work of fiction; a novel or tale. Now chiefly in depreciatory use; cf.  

3b.

1875   H. E. Manning Internal Mission of Holy Ghost ix. 258   They read nothing but fictions and levities.
1939   ‘G. Orwell’ Let. 9 Apr. (1968) I. 394   By contract he's supposed to publish my next three fictions.

 5. A supposition known to be at variance with fact, but conventionally accepted for some reason
of practical convenience, conformity with traditional usage, decorum, or the like.

 a. in Law.  

Chiefly applied to those feigned statements of fact which the practice of the courts authorized to be
alleged by a plaintiff in order to bring his case within the scope of the law or the jurisdiction of the
court, and which the defendant was not allowed to disprove. Fictions of this kind are now almost
obsolete in England, the objects which they were designed to serve having been for the most part
attained by the amendment of the law.

1590   H. Swinburne Briefe Treat. Test. & Willes iv. f. 165   It were against all right..that he should be iudged
the father of that childe, by fiction of lawe.
1767   W. Blackstone Comm. Laws Eng. (new ed.) II. 223   That ancestor, from whom it..is supposed by fiction
of law to have originally descended.
1775   Ld. Mansfield in Mostyn v. Fabrigas, Smith's Leading Cases (ed. 9) I. 652   It is a certain rule, that a
fiction of law shall never be contradicted so as to defeat the end for which it was invented, but for every
other purpose it may be contradicted.
1818   W. Cruise Digest Laws Eng. Real Prop. (ed. 2) I. 26   It became a fundamental maxim, or rather fiction
of our law that all real property was originally granted by the king.
1842   S. Lover Handy Andy xl. 312   The gold leaf has its representative in ‘legal fiction’.
1861   H. S. Maine Anc. Law ii. 26   I..employ the expression ‘Legal Fiction’ to signify any assumption which
conceals, or affects to conceal, the fact that a rule of law has undergone alteration.
1876   E. A. Freeman Hist. Norman Conquest V. xxii. 17   The same spirit of legal fiction..shows itself..in the
way in which the facts of the great confiscation are dealt with.

 b. gen. (chiefly transferred).  

1828   Ld. Grenville Sinking Fund 11   To reduce debt by borrowing..is a manifest fiction in finance.
 1841   C. Dickens Old Curiosity Shop i. vii. 116   By a like pleasant fiction his single chamber was always
mentioned in the plural number.
1861   J. S. Mill Utilitarianism i. 2   The elements of algebra..are as full of fictions as English law.

Compounds

  fiction-character  n.  

1909   Daily Chron. 12 Mar. 3/4   A second helping of a fiction character..cannot quite be like the first.
1937   W. H. Auden & L. MacNeice Lett. from Iceland ii. 28   The originals of the fiction-characters are generally
well-known.

  fiction-mint  n.  

1821   J. Bentham Elements Art of Packing viii. 84 (note)    Those fiction~mints.

  fiction-monger  n.  

1835   J. P. Kennedy Horse-shoe Robinson I. ii. 31   If any one, hereafter, should tell your story, he will be
accounted a fiction-monger.
1850   C. Kingsley Alton Locke II. viii. 111   Trials have become lately quite hackneyed subjects, stock properties
for the fiction-mongers.
1891   J. Winsor Columbus vi. 112   The credulous fiction-mongers who hang about the skirts of the historic field.
1891   Pall Mall Gaz. 7 Oct. 3/1   He is no mere fiction-monger.

  fiction-writer  n.  

1859   Sat. Rev. 7 43/1   The rest are the regular property of the fiction-writer.

  fiction-writing  n.  

1856   ‘G. Eliot’ Jrnl. 20 July (1998) 62   I am anxious to begin my fiction writing.
1966   Times 28 Feb. (Canada Suppl.) p. ix/1   Painting, play and fiction-writing.

Derivatives

  ˈfiction  v. transitive and intransitive. To feign; to fictionize; to admit of  

being fictionized. rare.

1961   Amer. Speech 36 138   You can see for your self it doesn't fiction.
1966   Punch 12 Jan. 64/2   Yes, yes, yes, but why fiction it? Particularly because the fiction is weak.
  ˈfictioned adj.  

1820   W. M. Praed Surly Hall 238   His fictioned flame.

1849   A. R. Smith Pottleton Legacy xiii. 110   The mistress of the house was dimly fictioned as being the only
person who had ever read them.

Copyright © 2023 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.