Fiction

Forms: 4 ficcion, (5–6 fyccion, -cyon, -tion(e), 7 fixion, 5– fiction. [a. Fr. fiction (= Pr. fiction, ficxio, Sp. ficcion), ad. L. fictiōn-em, n. of action f. fingĕre to fashion or form: see FEIGN.]

  † 1.  The action of fashioning or imitating. Obs.

1607.  Topsell, Four-f. Beasts (1658), 415. In some parts of Germany … it [the shrew] is called … Zissmuss, from the fiction of his voice.

1711.  Shaftesb., Charac., VI. v. (1737), III. 381. The compleatly imitative and illusive Art of Painting, whose Character it is to employ in her Works the united Force of different Colours; and who, surpassing by so many Degrees, and in so many Privileges, all other Human Fiction, or imitative Art, aspires in a directer manner towards Deceit, and a Command over our very Sense.

  † b.  Arbitrary invention. Obs.

a. 1629.  T. Adams, Two Sonnes, Wks. (1629), 422. The king hauing made positiue lawes and decrees, whereby he will gouerne either his publike or priuate house, his kingdome or familie, disdaines that a Groome should contradict and annull those, to dignifie and aduance other of his own fiction.

1790.  Burke, Fr. Rev., Wks. V. 277. We have never dreamt that parliaments had any right whatever to violate property, to over-rule prescription, or to force a currency of their own fiction in the place of that which is real, and recognized by the law of nations.

  † c.  concr. That which is fashioned or framed; a device, a fabric. Obs.

1579.  Gosson, The Schoole of Abuse (Arb.), 49. Whilst the one chats, his throte is cut; whilest the other syttes drawing Mathematicall fictions, the enimie standes with a sworde at his breast.

1610.  Guillim, Heraldry, III. v. (1660), 123. Thunder and Lightning do both proceed from one self Cause, they haue in such their imaginary Fiction conjoyned them both under one Form, after this Manner.

1784.  Cowper, Task, I. 413.

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

1483.  Caxton, Cato, A iv b. He that sheweth hym a frende by fyction and faynyng for to dysceyue hym to whome he sheweth sygne of loue.

1502.  Ord. Crysten Men (W. de W., 1506), I. iii. 38. Without hauynge fyccyon in his worde.

c. 1532.  Dewes, Introd. Fr., in Palsgr., 1021. I say without fiction.

1605.  Bacon, Adv. Learn., I. vii. § 7 (1873), 56. A man of the purest goodness, without all fiction or affectation, that hath reigned or lived, made his mind continually present and entire.

1609.  Bible (Douay), Wisd. vii. 13. Which I lerned without fiction.

  3.  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.  Bacon, Adv. Learn., I. iv. § 8. 21. Hee that will easily beleeue rumours will as easily augment rumors … so great an affinitie hath fiction and beleefe.

1651.  Hobbes, Leviath., II. xxvii. 151. To be pleased in the fiction of that, which would please a man if it were real, is a Passion so adherent to the Nature both of man, and every other living creature, as to make it a Sin were to make Sin of being a man.

1711.  Shaftesb., Charac., i. (1737), I. 4. Truth is the most powerful thing in the World, since even Fiction it-self must be govern’d by it, and can only please by its resemblance.

1748.  Hartley, Observations on Man, II. i. 39. The extreme Mischiefe which Fiction and Fraud occasion in the World.

1840.  Thirlwall, 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.

1398.  Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., I. (1495), 3. They wysely … vse poetes in their ficcions.

1509.  Hawes, The Pastime of Pleasure, Proem, v.

1589.  Warner, Alb. Eng., II. Prose Add. (1612), 332. The waues sollicited (a Poeticall fiction) by the wife of Iupiter.

1601.  Shaks., Twel. N., III. iv. 141. Fa. If this were plaid vpon a stage now, I could condemne it as an improbable fiction.

1612.  T. Wilson, Chr. Dict., 375. The popish Priest-hood is an immaginary and blasphemous fixion.

1798.  Ferriar, Illustr. Sterne, Eng. Hist., 251. Fiction is always more feeble than truth; for the most difficult task of imagination, is the invention of incidents.

1847.  Emerson, Repr. Men, Shaks., Wks. (Bohn), I. 362. Few real men have left such distinct characters as these fictions.

1855.  H. Spencer, Princ. Psychol. (1872), II. VIII. iii. 536. Until fact, considered as coincidence between a relation stated and a relation found to exist, has become clearly distinguished from fiction.

1876.  Gladstone, Homeric Syncr., 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.

1611.  Bible, Transl. Pref., 1. What a fiction or fable … was deuised.

1655–60.  T. Stanley, Hist. Philos. (1701), 601/1. Let us cast away all fiction.

1719.  De Foe, Crusoe, I. 317. Though this was all a Fiction of his own, yet it had its desir’d Effect.

1781.  Gibbon, Decl. & F., II. xxxvi. 326. Such an anecdote may be rejected as an improbable fiction; but it is a fiction which would not have been imagined, unless in the life of a hero.

1848.  Macaulay, Hist. Eng., I. 581. The messengers examined by the Commons were not on an oath, and might therefore 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.  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 (title), The Fountaine of Ancient Fiction.

1780.  J. Harris, Philol. Enq., Wks. (1841), 428. And hence it follows, that as dramatic fiction copies real life, not only diction is a necessary part of it, but manners also, and sentiment.

1829.  Lytton, Devereux, IV. vi. We old people like history better than fiction; and frailty is certain, while virtue is always doubtful.

1841.  Lane, Arab. Nts., I. 65. The Arabs and other Mohammadans enjoy a remarkable advantage over us in the composition of works of fiction: in the invention of incidents which we should regard as absurd in the extreme, they cannot be accused by their countrymen of exceeding the bounds of probability.

1862.  J. H. Burton, Bk. Hunter (1863), 10. It will not demand that breadth of charity which even rather rigid fathers are permitted to exercise by the license of the existing school of French fiction.

  b.  A work of fiction; a novel or tale. Now chiefly in depreciatory use; cf. 3 b.

1875.  Cardinal Manning, The Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost, ix. 258. They read nothing but fictions and levities, till their very minds become light and false.

  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.  Swinburne, Testaments, 165. It were against all right and reason that he should be iudged the father of that childe, by fiction of lawe, which he could not beget by possibility of nature.

1767.  Blackstone, Comm., II. 223. It shall result back to the heirs of the body of that ancestor, from whom it either really has, or 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.  Cruise, Digest (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, and held mediately or immediately of the crown, in consideration of certain services to be rendered by the tenant.

1861.  Maine, Anc. Law, ii. (1876), 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.  Freeman, Norm. Conq. V. xxii. 17. The same spirit of legal fiction which shows itself in the marking of time in Domesday shows itself no less in the way in which the facts of the great confiscation are dealt with.

  b.  gen. (chiefly transf.)

1828.  Ld. Grenville, Essay on the Supposed Advantages of a Sinking Fund, 11. To reduce debt by borrowing to the same amount on terms of equal or greater disadvantage, is a manifest fiction in finance:—a fiction in that branch of government, in which, above all others, ficiton is most to be condemned.

1840.  Dickens, Old C. Shop, vii. By a like pleasant fiction his single chamber was always mentioned in the plural number.

1861.  Mill, Utilit., i. 1–2. There would be no science more precarious, or whose conclusions were more insufficiently made out, than algebra; which derives none of its certainty from what are commonly taught to learners as its elements, since these, as laid down by some of its most eminent teachers, are as full of fictions as English law, and of mysteries as theology.

  6.  Comb., as fiction-mint, -monger, -writer.

1810.  Bentham, The Elements of the Art of Packing (1821), viii. 84 note. Found extra work for one of those fiction-mints, without which not one of all the Honourable Courts in Westminster-hall would hold itself competent to go through its business.

1859.  The Saturday Review, VII. 8 Jan., 43/1. In What will He do with It? there is only one character—that of Waife, an old, cheerful, tender-hearted vagabond—which can be called new or striking. The rest are the regular property of the fiction-writer.

1891.  J. Winsor, Columbus, vi. 112. The monk Philoponus and the rest of the credulous fictionmongers who hang about the skirts of the historic field.

1891.  Pall Mall G., 7 Oct., 3/1. He is no mere fiction-monger.

  Hence Fiction v. trans. To feign. rare^–0. Fictioned vppl. a.

1820.  Praed, Surly Hall, 238.