Also 6–7 -logy, 7 -loge. [a. Fr. apologue, ad. L. apologus, a. Gr. ἀπόγογος account, story, fable, f. ἀπό off + λόγος speech.] An allegorical story intended to convey a useful lesson; a moral fable. (Applied more especially to a story in which the actors or speakers are taken from the brute creation or from inanimate nature.)
1552–5. Latimer, Serm. & Rem. (1845), 210. To teach the people in apologies, bringing in how one beast talketh with another.
1607. Topsell, Four-footed Beasts, 578. A pretty apology of a league that was made betwixt the wolves and the sheep.
1699. Bentley, Phal., 496. Æsop a poor Slave could make Apologues at Samos.
1837–9. Hallam, Hist. Lit. (1847), II. 118. Employing the veil of apologue.
1879. Farrar, Paul, I. 633. The apologue of the self-asserting members in 1 Cor. xii. reminds us at once of the ingenious fable of Menenius Agrippa.
