fiction, n.
(ˈfɪkʃən)
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. a. 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 Shaftesbury Charac. vi. v. (1737) III. 381 The..Art of Painting..surpassing by so many Degrees..all other Human Fiction, or imitative Art. |
b. Arbitrary invention.
| a 1629 T. Adams Two Sonnes Wks. (1629) 422 The King hauing made positiue lawes..disdaines that a Groome should..annull those, to..aduance other of his own fiction. 1790 Burke Fr. Rev. Wks. V. 277 We have never dreamt that parliaments had any right..to force a currency of their own fiction in the place of that which is real. |
c. concr. That which is fashioned or framed; a device, a fabric.
| 1579 Gosson Sch. Abuse (Arb.) 49 The other syttes drawing Mathematicall fictions. 1610 J. Guillim Heraldry iii. v. (1660) 123 Thunder and Lightning..they haue in..their imaginary fiction conjoyned. 1784 Cowper Task i. 416 Renounce the odours of the open field For the unscented fictions of the loom. |
† 2. Feigning, counterfeiting; deceit, dissimulation, pretence. Obs.
| 1483 Caxton Cato A iv b, He that sheweth him a frende by fyction and faynyng for to dysceyue him. 1502 Ord. Crysten Men (W. de W. 1506) i. iii. 38 Without hauynge fyccyon in his worde. c 1532 G. Du Wes 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. 1609 Bible (Douay) Wisd. vii. 13 Which I lerned without fiction. |
3. a. 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..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 reall, is a Passion..adhærent to the Nature..of man. 1711 Shaftesbury Charac. i. (1737) I. 4 Truth is the most powerful thing in the World, since even fiction it-self must be governed by it. 1748 Hartley Observ. 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 Past. Pleas. Proem v, Whose [i.e. Lydgate's] fatall fictions are yet permanent, Grounded on reason. 1589 Warner Alb. Eng. ii. Prose Add. (1612) 332 The waues sollicited (a Poeticall fiction) by the wife of Iupiter. 1601 Shakes. Twel. N. iii. iv. 141 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. 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..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 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. 1848 Macaulay Hist. Eng. I. 581 The messengers..might..have related mere fictions without incurring the penalties of perjury. 1873 Holland A. Bonnic. i. 17 He had been playing off a fiction upon me. |
4. a. 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 Harris Philol. Enq. Wks. (1841) 428 Dramatic fiction copies real life. 1829 Lytton Devereux iv. vi, Old people like history better than fiction. 1841 Lane Arab. Nts. I. 65 The Arabs..enjoy a remarkable advantage over us in the composition of works of fiction. 1862 Burton Bk. Hunter (1863) 10 The existing school of French fiction. |
b. A work of fiction; a novel or tale. Now chiefly in depreciatory use; cf. 3 b.
| 1875 Manning Mission H. Ghost ix. 258 They read nothing but fictions and levities. 1939 ‘G. Orwell’ Let. 9 Apr. (1968) I. 394 By contract he's supposed to publish my next three fictions. |
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..that he should be iudged the father of that childe, by fiction of lawe. 1767 Blackstone Comm. II. 223 That ancestor, from whom it..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. 1842 S. Lover Handy Andy xl. 312 The gold leaf has its representative in ‘legal fiction’. 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..shows itself..in the way in which the facts of the great confiscation are dealt with. |
b. gen. (chiefly transf.)
| 1828 Ld. Grenville Sink. Fund 11 To reduce debt by borrowing..is a manifest fiction in finance. 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. 2 The elements of algebra..are as full of fictions as English law. |
6. Comb., as fiction-character, fiction-mint, fiction-monger, fiction-writer, fiction-writing.
| 1810 Bentham Packing (1821) viii. 84 note, Those fiction⁓mints. 1835 J. P. Kennedy Horse-Shoe Robinson ii. 32 If any one, hereafter, should tell your story, he will be accounted a fiction-monger. 1850 Kingsley A. Locke II. viii. 111 Trials have become lately quite hackneyed subjects, stock properties for the fiction-mongers. 1859 Sat. Rev. VII. 43/1 The rest are the regular property of the fiction-writer. 1865 Geo. Eliot Jrnl. 20 July (1884) 333, I am anxious to begin my fiction writing. 1891 J. Winsor Columbus vi. 112 The credulous fiction-mongers who hang about the skirts of the historic field. 1891 Pall Mall G. 7 Oct. 3/1 He is no mere fiction-monger. 1909 Daily Chron. 12 Mar. 3/4 A second helping of a fiction character..cannot quite be like the first. 1937 Auden & MacNeice Lett. fr. Iceland ii. 28 The originals of the fiction-characters are generally well-known. 1966 Times 28 Feb. (Canada Suppl.) p. ix/1 Painting, play and fiction-writing. |
Hence ˈfiction v. trans. and intr. To feign; to fictionize; to admit of being fictionized. rare. ˈfictioned ppl. a.
| 1820 Praed Surly Hall 238 His fictioned flame. 1849 A. Smith Pottleton Legacy xiii. 110 The mistress of the house was dimly fictioned as being the only person who had ever read them. 1961 Amer. Speech XXXVI. 138 You can see for your self it doesn't fiction. 1966 Punch 12 Jan. 64/2 Yes, yes, yes, but why fiction it? Particularly because the fiction is weak. |