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Fiction   /fˈɪkʃən/   Listen
noun
Fiction  n.  
1.
The act of feigning, inventing, or imagining; as, by a mere fiction of the mind.
2.
That which is feigned, invented, or imagined; especially, a feigned or invented story, whether oral or written. Hence: A story told in order to deceive; a fabrication; opposed to fact, or reality. "The fiction of those golden apples kept by a dragon." "When it could no longer be denied that her flight had been voluntary, numerous fictions were invented to account for it."
3.
Fictitious literature; comprehensively, all works of imagination; specifically, novels and romances. "The office of fiction as a vehicle of instruction and moral elevation has been recognized by most if not all great educators."
4.
(Law) An assumption of a possible thing as a fact, irrespective of the question of its truth.
5.
Any like assumption made for convenience, as for passing more rapidly over what is not disputed, and arriving at points really at issue.
Synonyms: Fabrication; invention; fable; falsehood. Fiction, Fabrication. Fiction is opposed to what is real; fabrication to what is true. Fiction is designed commonly to amuse, and sometimes to instruct; a fabrication is always intended to mislead and deceive. In the novels of Sir Walter Scott we have fiction of the highest order. The poems of Ossian, so called, were chiefly fabrications by Macpherson.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fiction" Quotes from Famous Books



... on any man, whether he be the Governor in his chair of State, or the hunted outlaw wandering through the night, hungry and cold and with murder in his heart. We are tired of the pretense that we have special privileges and the reality that we have none; of the fiction that we are queens, and the fact that we are subjects; of the symbolism which exalts our sex but is only a meaningless mockery. We demand that these shadows shall take substance. The coat of arms of the State of New York represents Liberty and Justice supporting a shield on which is seen the sun ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... and love and the three of them discussed the little improvement with the intimacy of old friends. Several books, one of them still open at the page where Penelope had been reading, were on a table beside the window. Gordon took them up one by one and ran over their titles. "Ah, poetry—and fiction—and biography—how catholic your interests are, Penelope! But I knew that already. Sociology, too. Yes, I knew that is your favorite study. It is mine, too, but I haven't had as much time yet to ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly

... has sometimes happened that the sovereign for whom a regent was required to be appointed was incapable of performing any governmental act. In such a case, there has been resort usually to some legal fiction by which the appearance, at least, of regularity has been preserved. A regency act regularly defines the limits of the regent's powers and establishes specific safeguards in respect to the interests of both ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... popular notion of Eastern customs. We hear a great deal about Harems, and we fancy that every Persian must have dozens of wives, while there are people who seriously believe that the Shah has no less than one wife for each day of the year, or 365 in all! That is all very pretty fiction, but differs ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... said in these pages in previous years, for the benefit of the reader as yet unacquainted with my standards and principles of selection, I shall point out that I have set myself the task of disengaging the essential human qualities in our contemporary fiction which, when chronicled conscientiously by our literary artists, may fairly be called a criticism of life. I am not at all interested in formulae, and organized criticism at its best would be nothing more than dead criticism, as all dogmatic ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various


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