Forms: 4, 6 fabel(l, 4–5 fabil(l, fabul(le, 4– fable. [a. F. fable (OF. also flabe, fauble, Pr. faula) ad. L. fābula discourse, narrative, story, dramatic composition, the plot of a play, a fable, f. fārī to speak: see FATE.]
1. A fictitious narrative or statement; a story not founded on fact.
a. 1300. Cursor Mundi, 23856 (Cott.).
| Bot war a ribaude us tald, | |
| Of a fantime or of a fabel. |
a. 1340. Hampole, Psalter, xxxiii. 11. I sall lere ȝow noght þe fabils of poetis, na þe storis of tyraunts.
1483. Caxton, Cato, G vj b. The poetes and many other sayen and rehercen many fables and thynges meruayllous.
1577. Rhodes, Bk. Nurture, in Babees Bk., 64. Keepe them [children] from reading of fayned fables, vayne fantasyes, and wanton stories, and songs of loue, which bring much mischiefe to youth.
1642. Milton, An Apology for Smectymnuus, Wks. (Bohn), III. 118. Those lofty fables and romances, which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood.
1700. Dryden, trans. Ovid’s Met., XII., in Fables, 440.
| A Stump too heavy for a Team to draw, | |
| (It seems a Fable, tho’ the Fact I saw;) | |
| He threw at Pholon; the descending Blow | |
| Divides the Skull, and cleaves his Head in two. |
1726. De Foe, Hist. Devil, I. x. (1840), 142. If we may take the story of Job for a history, not a fable.
1840. Dickens, Barn. Rudge, xxi. Some say he kissed her, but that’s a fable.
1860. Hawthorne, Transform., II. i. 3. ‘It is a most enchanting fable!’ exclaimed Kenyon; ‘that is, if it be not a fact.’
b. esp. A fictitious story relating to supernatural or extraordinary persons or incidents, and more or less current in popular belief; a myth or legend. (Now rare.) Also, legendary or mythical stories in general; mythological fiction.
a. 1300. Cursor Mundi, 6995 (Cott.).
| In his [Saleph’s] time war þe fabuls written … | |
| Saturnus and sir iubiter. |
1494. Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France, v. cvi. 81. Of this last ende and buriyng of Arthur, in the Brytysshe bokes, are tolde many fables.
1520. Skelton, Bk. P. Sparow.
| Though I remember the fable | |
| Of Penelope most stable. |
1592. Davies, On the Immortality of the Soul, IV. (1714), 40.
| And as Minerva is in fables said, | |
| From Jove, without a mother, to proceed. |
1667. Milton, P. L., I. 196.
| [Satan] in bulk as huge | |
| As whom the Fables name of monstrous size. |
1756–7. trans. Keysler’s Trav. (1760), II. 288. Next come the sons of Seth, with a revival of the old fable of Seth’s pillars.
1774. Goldsm., Natural History (1776), II. 251. The existence, therefore, of a pigmy race of mankind, being founded in error, or in fable, we can expect to find men of diminutive stature only by accident, among men of the ordinary size.
1837. Landor, Pentameron, Wks. 1846, II. 315/1. Scythia was a land of fable, not only to the Greeks, but equally to the Romans.
1855. Milman, Lat. Chr. (1864), II. IV. i. 170. Even Mohammedan fable had none of the inventive originality of fiction.
c. A foolish or ridiculous story; idle talk, nonsense; esp. in phr. old wives’ (women’s) fables (arch.). Also † To take (something) for fable, to hold at fable (transl. OF. tenir a fable).
1382. Wyclif, 1 Tim. iv. 7. Schonye thou vncouenable fablis and veyn [1388, vncouenable fablis, and elde wymmenus fablis].
c. 1430. Pilgr. Lyf Manhode, II. xxi. (1869), 83. Wolt þou holde þe gospel at fable?
1508. Fisher, Wks. (1876), I. 85. In the whiche confessyon we may not tell fables and other mennes fautes but onely our owne.
1523. Ld. Berners, Froiss., I. cclxxxviii. 430. Syluester toke it for no fable.
1605. Bacon, Adv. Learn., I. iv. § 9. After a period of time, when the mist began to clear up, they [narrations of miracles] grew to be esteemed but as old wives’ fables, impostures of the clergy, illusions of spirits, and badges of antichrist, to the great scandal and detriment of religion.
1721. Strype, Eccl. Mem., III. App. xx. 56. We turned the more secret mysteries of holy discipline, and the serious knowledge of divine things, either into open blasphemy, or distorted them into old wives fables.
d. A fiction invented to deceive; a fabrication, falsehood, † Phrase, without (but, sans) fable.
a. 1300. Cursor Mundi, 2349 (Cott.).
| Bot for þis hight moght be no fabul | |
| He troud wit stedfast throut and stabul. |
c. 1300. Kyng Alisaunder, 134.
| Of gold he made a table | |
| Al ful of steorren, saun fable. |
c. 1330. R. Brunne, Chron. (1810), 146. Men … þat neuer lufed fable, bot mayntend pes & right.
c. 1350. Will. Palerne, 4608. Þis ȝe witeþ wel alle · with-oute any fabul.
a. 1500. Childe of Bristowe, 227, in Hazl., E. P. P. (1864), 119.
| And al thynges that were mevable, | |
| he gaf aboute, withouten fable, | |
| to pore men that wold take. |
1535. Stewart, Cron. Scot., I. 534.
| Rycht fair he wes and feccfull als but fabill, | |
| Worthie and wyss, honest and honorabill. |
1548. Hall, Chron., 87 b. The writers of Frenche fables to deface the glorye of the Englishmen, write and say that these tounes yelded to the Burgonyon.
1590. Shaks., Com. Err., IV. iv. 76. Dro. Sans Fable, she her selfe reuil’d you there.
1635. Swan, Spec. M., i. § 1 (1643), 2. An evident argument, not only against the eternitie of the world, but also against the fables of the Egyptians, Scythians, and Grecians, concerning their ancientnesse, and the ancientnesse of their acts and deeds of fame.
1700. Dryden, trans. Ovid’s Met., XIII., in Fables, 457.
| This is not a Fable forg’d by me, | |
| Like one of his, an Ulyssean Lie. |
1786. T. Jefferson, Writ. (1859), II. 52. What is said, therefore, on this subject in the Courier d’Europe is entirely fable.
1848. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., II. 8. The extraordinary success of the fables of Oates is to be chiefly ascribed to the prevalence of this opinion.
e. A creation of fable; something falsely affirmed to exist; a ‘myth.’
c. 1590. Marlowe, Faust., V. 125. Come I think hell’s a fable.
1611. Tourneur, The Atheist’s Tragedie, IV. iii. Lang. Tush! tush! their walking Spirits are meere imaginarie fables.
1691. Hartcliffe, Virtues, p. xxiii. If a Man cannot believe, that the Idea of God is a Fancy, that the Immortality of the Soul is a Fable; then to what a degree of Madness doth he Act, who will venture the Rage of an Almighty Vengeance, and the Ruin of an Immortal Soul, for the sake of a Vice.
1836. J. Gilbert, Chr. Atonem., v. (1852), 126. Some substitute there plainly must be,—some not less intelligible revelation of the judgment of God against the unrighteousness of men,—or moral administration is a fable.
2. A short story devised to convey some useful lesson; esp. one in which animals or inanimate things are the speakers or actors; an apologue. Now the most prominent sense.
fl. 1340. Dan Michel of Northgate, The Ayenbite of Inwyt, 155. Þerof zet ysopes þe fable of þe little hounde and of þe asse.
1483. Caxton, Esope, 3. She gaf to hym the yefte of speche for to speke dyuerse fables and Inuencions.
1576. A. Fleming, A Panoplie of Epistles, 227. Vsing a fable of the grasshopper, and the Ant, therby thinking to incite him to set in open shewe, the giftes which lye hidden in him, as fruitelesse.
1605. Bacon, Adv. Learn., I. iv. § 11. The husbandman whereof Æsop makes the fable.
1711. Addison, Spect., No. 183, 29 Sept., ¶ 1. Jotham’s fable of the Trees is the oldest that is extant.
1796. H. Hunter, trans. St.-Pierre’s Stud. Nat. (1799), III. 496. This is the manner in which he [La Fontaine] depicts the Royal functions and those of the People, in his Fable of the Belly and the Members.
1841–4. Emerson, Ess. Hist., Wks. (Bohn), I. 6. A poet makes twenty fables with one moral.
1865. Wright, Hist. Caricature, v. (1875), 75. We find no traces of fables among the original literature of the German race.
3. [After Latin fabula.] The plot or story of a play or poem. † Also (rarely), a dramatic composition, play.
1678. Rymer, Trag. of Last Age, Ded. 4. I have chiefly consider’d the Fable or Plot, which all conclude to be the Soul of a Tragedy. Ibid., 87. This Fable [of Othello] is drawn from a Novel compos’d in Italian by Giraldi Cinthio who also was a Writer of Tragedies, and to that use employ’d such of his Tales, as he judged proper for the Stage.
1711. Addison, Spect., No. 39, 14 April, ¶ 3. The modern Tragedy excels that of Greece and Rome, in the Intricacy and Disposition of the Fable.
1767. B. Thornton, trans. Plautus, II. 112, note. The part which Lysimachus afterwards takes in the fable.
1779–81. Johnson, L. P., Cowley, Wks. II. 60. The fable [of the Davideis] is plainly implex.
1847. Emerson, Repr. Men, Shaks., Wks. (Bohn), I. 355. Shakespeare knew that tradition supplies a better fable than any invention can.
† 4. Talk, in phrase to hold (a person) in fable; discourse, narration. Obs. rare.
c. 1400. Rom. Rose, 1439.
| I wole nat longe holde you in fable | |
| Of alle this gardyn delectable. |
1530. Buckmaster, Let., in Corpus Christi Documents (1838), 24. Here shalbe an ende for this tyme of this fable.
1598. B. Jonson, Ev. Man in Hum., II. i.
| Whilst they, Sir, to relieve him in the fable, | |
| Make their loose comments, upon every word, | |
| Gesture, or look, I use. |
b. The subject of common talk; a person or thing who has become proverbial; a ‘byword.’ arch. [After L. fabula: see Hor. Ep. I. xiii. 9.]
1535. Coverdale, 1 Kings ix. 7. Israel shall be come a byworde and fabell [1382, Wyclif, schal be into a proverbe and into a fable] amonge all nacions.
1591. Spenser, Ruines of Rome, vii.
| Ye sacred ruines … | |
| Alas, by little ye to nothing flie, | |
| The peoples fable, and the spoyle of all. |
1605. B. Jonson, Volpone, I. v. Knew you not that Sir? ’Tis the common fable.
1670. Cotton, Espernon, II. VII. 316. The Duke, after he had a few days made himself merry with mortifying his Gull, let him at last depart; who, as he had been before at Metz, became afterwards the Fable of the Court.
1766. C. Anstey, Bath Guide, XV. 14.
| I’m a Fable!—an instance!—and serve to dispense | |
| An Example to all Men of Spirit and Sense. |
1842. Tennyson, The Gardener’s Daughter, 4.
| A friendship so complete | |
| Portion’d in halves between us, that we grew | |
| The fable of the city where we dwelt. |
1849. Thackeray, Pendennis, lxxv. He had extraordinary luck at Baden: broke the bank several nights, and was the fable of the place.
¶ 5. ? A trifle, toy. Obs. rare–1.
1552. Huloet, Seller of fables, haberdash wares, or trifles.
6. attrib. and Comb. a. attributive, as fable-book, -forge, † -lesynge, -tale; b. objective, as fable-forger, -maker, -monger, -teller, -weaver; fable-framing, -mongering adjs.
1387. Trevisa, Higden (Rolls), II. 421. Varro telleþ nouȝt a fable lesynge.
1552. Huloet. Fabler, or fable teller, or full of fables, fabulosus.
1591. Sylvester, Du Bartas, I. iv. 114. And therefore smile I at those Fable-Forges.
1610. Healey, St. Augustine, Of the Citie of God, 679. It canot be said how mischieuous the presumption of those fable-forgers was, vpon the hearts of all mankind, that they would beare with such vngodly slaunders of their gods.
1647. R. Stapylton, Juvenal, 173. Rhodope … (fellow bond-woman to Æsop the Fable-maker).
1652. C. B. Stapylton, Herodian, VII. 55. Niger … who tells us a fabile tale.
a. 1661. Holyday, Juvenal, Pref. The famous Italian Fable-weaver Ariosto, was by the rude discourtesie of Law-suites disturb’d in the pleasure of his Phansie twice seven years.
1677. Gale, Crt. Gentiles, II. III. 72. The Pythagorising Jewish humor of Fable-framing Philosophie.
1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., I. iv. Contents, 190. The Licentious Figments of Poets and Fable-Mongers, frequently condemned by Plato and other Wiser Pagans.
a. 1700. Dryden, Epist., vii. 32.
| But spite of all these Fable-Makers, | |
| He never sow’d on Almain Acres. |
1734. Waterland, Scripture Vindicated, Pref. xxii. The attentive Readers may perceive how to distinguish the true and proper Allegorists from the Fable-mongers or Mythics.
1788. V. Knox, Winter Even., I. II. xv. 208. Fable books used for the initiation of children in reading.
1833. H. A., in Philol. Mus., II. 442. Men who were not fable-makers or compilers of marvellous stories.
1851. H. Melville, Whale, xxxiv. 168. To his great delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise and depart; to his credulous, fable-mongering ears, all their martial bones jingling in them at every step, like Moorish scimitars in scabbards.
