[f. L. fabricāt- ppl. stem of fabricā-re, f. fabrica FABRIC sb.]
1. trans. To make anything that requires skill; to construct, manufacture. Now rare.
1598. Yong, Diana, 171. Whose sides were not of wals fabricated by artificiall hand, but made of trees by nature (the mistresse of all things).
1667. Flavel, Saint Indeed (1754), 59. Such a [guilty] conscience is the Devil’s anvil, on which he fabricates all those swords and spears, with which the guilty sinner pierces and wounds himself.
1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., 235. God Fabricated the Earth also, which is our Nurse, turning round upon the Axis of the World, and thereby causing and maintaining the Succession of Day and Night, the First and Oldest of all the Gods.
1774. Pennant, Tour Scotl. in 1772. 10. Locks, hinges, cast-iron, and other branches of hardware, are fabricated here to a great amount.
1821. W. M. Craig, Lectures on Drawing, etc., ii. 134. Colourless glass, fit for protecting a large picture, has never yet been fabricated.
1857. Whewell, Hist. Induct. Sc., I. 198. He is reported to have fabricated clocks.
1872. Yeats, Growth Comm., III. vi. 247. Mulberries were planted near Tours, and silk was first fabricated in that city.
† b. To fabricate about with: to surround as with a framework of. Obs.
1634. Sir T. Herbert, Trav., 64. This citie, the metropolis of Persia, is fabricated about with spacious gardens.
c. with immaterial object. Also absol.
1621. Burton, Anat. Mel., II. ii. III. 328. Our later Mathematitians haue rolled all the stones that may be stirred, and to salue all apparances & obiections, haue invented new hypotheses, and fabricated new systemes of the World, out of their own Dedalian heads.
1783. C. J. Fox, Sp. E. India Bill, 26 Nov., Wks. 1815, II. 220. As he was not vain enough to think, that any bill he could fabricate would be perfect, or that a bill containing so large a number of various regulations, would not call for much discussion, and even some alteration, he certainly would give due time for gentlemen to consider the subject.
1864. Bowen, Logic, ii. 43. And is it nothing to watch the secret workshop in which nature fabricates cognitions and thoughts?
1875. Whitney, Life Lang., ii. 19. Every word handed down in every human language is an arbitrary and conventional sign: arbitrary, because any one of the tens of thousands other words current among men, or of the tens of thousands which might be fabricated, could have been equally well learned and applied to this particular purpose; conventional, because the reason for the use of this rather than another lies solely in the fact that it is already used in the community to which the speaker belongs.
† d. Used for: To produce factitiously. Obs.
1776. Th. Percival, Philos., Med. & Exp. Essays, III. 274. That the miliary eruption is frequently fabricated by close rooms, heating remedies, and forced sweats, is a truth acknowledged by almost every modern practitioner; and the danger and absurdity of such a method of treatment, in every species of fever, cannot be too strongly enforced.
2. In bad sense: To ‘make up’; to frame or invent (a legend, lie, etc.); to forge (a document).
1779. J. Moore, View Soc. Fr., I. xl. 376. The Jews, as you would expect, deny every circumstance of this story, except the murdering and pillaging their countrymen. They say the whole story was fabricated to furnish a pretext for these robberies and murders, and assert that the steeple of Strasburg, as has been said of the monument of London,
| ‘Like a tall bully lifts the head and lies.’ |
1790. Paley, Horæ Paul., i. 5. It would be easy for an impostor, who was fabricating a letter in the name of St. Paul, to collect these articles into one view.
1818. Hallam, Mid. Ages, ix. (1819), 346. Every saint [had] his legend, fabricated in order to enrich the churches under his protection.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., IV. 391. Middleton found, on his arrival, that numerous lies, fabricated by the priests, who feared and hated him, were already in circulation.
1873. Act 36–7 Vict., c. 71 § 33. If any person … wilfully fabricate in whole or in part … any voting paper.
Hence Fabricated ppl. a., Fabricating vbl. sb.
1630. Wadsworth, Sp. Pilgr., vii. 67. His Art in contriuing and fabricating of Ships, and Gallyes.
1790. Mrs. A. M. Johnson, Monmouth, II. 65. While the secret schemes of diabolical revenge were fabricating to plant fresh thorns in the Duchess’s house.
1796. Morse, Amer. Geog., II. 542. Among the fabricated articles are great numbers of stoves, both open and close.
1796. Burke, Let. Noble Ld., Wks. VIII. 67. It is one fatal objection to all new fancied and new fabricated republicks.
1805. T. Jefferson, Writ. (1830), IV. 43. Though framed when every real fact was fresh in the knowledge of every one, this fabricated flight from Richmond was not among the charges stated in this paper, nor any charge against Mr. Jefferson for not fighting, singly, the troop of horse.
1853. Kane, Grinnell Exp., xxv. (1856), 205. There is not a man among them who would have given for a single moment the countenance of his silence to a fabricated claim.
