fabulist
Americannoun
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a person who invents or recounts fables
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a person who lies or falsifies
Etymology
Origin of fabulist
1585–95; < Middle French fabuliste, equivalent to < fābul ( a ) fable + -iste -ist
Explanation
A fabulist is a storyteller. Your uncle who spends holiday gatherings telling stories that end with clear morals is a fabulist, and so is your cousin who invents long, complicated excuses for being late to school every morning. Someone who writes or recites fables — moralistic tales that often feature animals as characters — is one kind of fabulist. The ancient Greek fabulist Aesop, for example, composed many stories about talking animals that ended with important moral lessons. Another kind of fabulist is a person who tells tall tales, or who lies. The root of fabulist is the Old French fable, "lie or pretense," from the Latin fabula, "story, play, or tale," or literally, "that which is told."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Instead of, you know, being the subject of countless mirth-making hot-takes, including an upcoming HBO adaptation of Mark Chiusano’s book, “The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos.”
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 5, 2023
Discovery-owned premium cable giant confirmed Monday that it has optioned the rights to author Mark Chiusano’s nonfiction book “The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos.”
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 4, 2023
In The Fabulist, the dreadful, self-justifying novel Glass wrote a couple of years after his disgrace, he depicted the Hanna-like character as conniving, sleazy, and disloyal, and the Hanna-like character’s husband as even worse.
From Slate • Jan. 28, 2014
James Purdy, a Fabulist Haunting the Fringes When he died in 2009, at 94, James Purdy was a forgotten man.
From New York Times • Aug. 26, 2013
Who they were, what they were, where they lived, Aesop Fabulist Greece 550—?
From Fifty Famous People by Baldwin, James
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
