Definition of: fiction

(fik′shən) noun
1. The act of feigning or imagining that which does not exist or is not actual.
2. That which is feigned or imagined, as opposed to that which is actual.
3. The department of literature that embraces fictitious narrative, including romances, novels, short stories, art epics, etc. See NOVEL.
4. A legal assumption, for the furtherance of justice, that a certain thing which is or may be false is true.
5. Obs. The act of fashioning; also, a device; fabric.
6. Obs. Pretense; deceit. [<F <L fictio, -onis a making <fìngere form] Synonyms: allegory, apolog, fable, fabrication, falsehood, figment, invention, legend, myth, novel, romance, story. Fiction is now chiefly used of a prose work in narrative form in which the characters are partly or wholly imaginary, and which is designed to portray human life, with or without a practical lesson; a romance portrays what is picturesque or striking, as a mere fiction may not do; novel is a general name for any continuous fictitious narrative, especially a love story. The moral of the fable is expressed formally; the lesson of the fiction, if any, is inwrought. A fiction is studied; a myth grows up without intent. A legend may be true, but cannot be historically verified; a myth has been received as true at some time. A fabrication is designed to deceive; it is a less odious word than falsehood, but is really stronger, as a falsehood may be a sudden unpremeditated statement, while a fabrication is a series of statements carefully studied and fitted together in order to deceive; the falsehood is all false; the fabrication may mingle the true with the false. A figment is something imaginary which the one who utters it may or may not believe to be true; we say, “That statement is a figment of his imagination.” The story may be either true or false, and covers the various senses of all the words in the group. Apolog, a word simply transferred from Greek into English, is the same as fable. Compare ALLEGORY. Antonyms: certainty, fact, history, literalness, reality, truth, verity.