a. [f. L. fictīci-us (f. fingĕre to fashion, FEIGN) + -OUS: see -ITIOUS.]
1. † a. Artificial as opposed to natural (obs.). b. Counterfeit, ‘imitation,’ sham; not genuine.
1615. Crooke, Body of Man, 84. Able to distinguish betweene natural and fictitious precious Stones.
1685. Boyle, Enq. Notion Nat., 29. Chymists distinguish Vitriol into Natural and Fictitious, or made by Art, (i. e.) by the Intervention of Human Power or Skill.
1725. Pope, Odyss., XVIII. 356.
| Three vases, heap’d with copious fires, display | |
| O’er all the palace a fictitious day. |
1734. trans. Rollin’s Anc. Hist. (1827), VIII. xix. 295. Perseus, royal sir, by accusing me in your presence, and by shedding fictitious tears to move you to compassion, had made you suspect mine, which alas! are but too sincere; and by that means deprived me of all the advantages the accused generally have.
1783. R. Watson, Philip III., I. (1839), 19. The army having been detained longer than it ought to have been in the fictitious attack on the fort of Schenck, the count was obliged to rest satisfied with securing his station at Empel.
1828. Scott, F. M. Perth, xxxi. The fictitious old woman ushered in Catharine.
1840. Macaulay, Clive, 45. Two treaties were drawn up, one on white paper, the other on red, the former real, the latter fictitious.
2. Arbitrarily devised; not founded on rational grounds.
1660. Jer. Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, I. ii. 76. Those things which by abuse and pretence of reason are passed into a fictitious and usurped authority, make no part of our Religion.
1662. H. Stubbe, Ind. Nectar, Preface, 4. The preached, but unpractised (and in many parts false, and fictitious) Doctrine of Mortification.
1736. Butler, Anal., I. iii. 96. The notion, then, of a moral scheme of government is not fictitious but natural.
1868. Rogers, Pol. Econ., iii. (1876), 5. Nations who have no money, properly so called, but who have been constrained to invent a fictitious measure in order to express values.
3. Of a name: Feigned, assumed or invented, not real. Of a character, etc.: Feigned, deceptively assumed, simulated.
a. 1633. Austin, Medit. (1635), 92. Philip Melancthon thinks, they [Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthazar] were not true; but fictitious Names.
1735. Pope, Lett., 7 March 1731. I may probably, in my next, make use of real Names, and not of Fictitious Ones.
1783. R. Watson, Philip III. (1793), I. IV. 406. It is impossible for men who act a fictitious part, uniformly to conceal their real sentiments.
1820. Scott, Ivanhoe, xxiii. Her haughtiness and habit of domination was, therefore, a fictitious character, induced over that which was natural to her.
1870. Dickens, E. Drood, iii. A fictitious name must be bestowed upon the old Cathedral town.
4. Feigned to exist; existing only in imagination; imaginary, unreal.
1621–51. Burton, Anat. Mel., III. iv. I. ii. 644. St. Christopher, and a company of fictitious Saints.
1634. Habington, Castara (Arb.).
| Nobler comfort entertaine | |
| In welcomming th’approach of death, then vice | |
| Ere found in her fictitious Paradise. |
1701. Rowe, Amb. Step-Moth., III. ii.
| Mem. See where the Master Villain stands! unmov’d | |
| And harden’d in Impiety, he laughs | |
| At the fictitious Justice of the God’s, | |
| And thinks their Thunder has now Wings to reach him. |
1827. Hare, Guesses (1859), 273. The facts in Poetry, being avowedly fictitious, are not false.
1865. Livingstone, Zambesi, vi. 148. They could see nothing beyond our inducing English merchants to establish a company, of which the Portuguese would, by fictitious claims, reap all the benefit.
1877. R. Giffen, Stock Exchange Securities, 64. Such fictitious securities, or partially fictitious securities, as the loans of Honduras, Paraguay, Costa Rica, San Domingo, Peru, Spain, and Turkey.
5. Of, pertaining to, or of the nature of fiction.
1773. Mrs. Chapone, Improv. Mind (1774), II. 144. I think the greatest care should be taken in the choice of those fictitious stories, that so enchant the mind, most of which tend to inflame the passions of youth, whilst the chief purpose of education should be to moderate and restrain them.
1838. Thirlwall, Greece, II. xvi. 358. Marvels which would be intolerable in a fictitious narrative.
1851. Thackeray, Eng. Hum. (1853), 107. Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life of the time.
6. Constituted or regarded as such by a (legal or conventional) fiction.
1837. Ht. Martineau, Soc. Amer., III. 261. They have been brought up to think it a sin to take a ride on Sundays. Once having yielded, and being under a sense of transgression for a wholly fictitious offence, they rarely stop there. They next join parties to smoke, and perhaps to drink, and so on.
1883. Maine, Early Law & Custom, iv. 100. The growing popularity of Adoption, as a method of obtaining a fictitious son.
