fib
Americannoun
-
fibs
plural
verb (used without object)
-
fibs,
present (3rd person singular)
-
fibbed,
past participle, past
-
fibbing
present participle
noun
verb
Synonym Usage
See falsehood.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
fibsimple
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fibssimple
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have fibbedperfect
-
has fibbedperfect
-
am fibbingprogressive
-
are fibbingprogressive
-
is fibbingprogressive
-
have been fibbingperfect progressive
-
has been fibbingperfect progressive
Past
-
fibbedsimple
-
had fibbedperfect
-
was fibbingprogressive
-
were fibbingprogressive
-
had been fibbingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of fib
1560–70; short for fibble-fable nonsense, gradational compound based on fable
Explanation
A fib is a small lie. If you think your friend's haircut looks strange, but you tell her you love it, it's a fib. When you tell a fib, you fib. The thing that distinguishes a fib from a lie is that a fib isn't terribly important — it's minor or petty. You might fib to protect someone's feelings or to save yourself a long explanation about exactly why you're late to work. The origin of the word fib is uncertain, but it may come from fibble-fable, or "nonsense," which in turn comes from fable.
Vocabulary lists containing fib
Dubliners
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Charlotte's Web
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I Survived Hurricane Katrina, 2005
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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.
See Examples For:
"Perhaps the starkest," Dr Rogers said, were her attempts to explain the cancer fib.
From BBC ● Jul. 7, 2025
If someone were to ask me how I kept my sanity this past year, I would first probably fib and come up with something literary.
From Slate ● Dec. 28, 2024
I challenged his movie reviews and caught him in a fib now and again.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 11, 2024
Rae’s pretext for the connection: Piano music helps her work, and Yoori was recommended by someone who overheard her practicing at the music school, a fib that the sweet but self-effacing Yoori hardly believes.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 6, 2024
So I don’t fib right here, right now in church.
From "Betty Before X" by Ilyasah Shabazz and Renée Watson
After an overconfident miller fibs that his daughter can spin straw into gold, a greedy king locks the poor girl in a room full of straw.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 20, 2026
Dwayne Johnson’s fans smelled that “The Rock” was cooking up fibs, and now the cheat-meal connoisseur is correcting his “first-ever” burger flub.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 2, 2024
Some of the people seduced by those fibs may not appreciate having been duped.
From Salon ● Sep. 23, 2023
This advisedly clunky emphasis on fibs and their detection is something of a Johnson trademark.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 2, 2023
Shelly was sharp when it came to sniffing out fibs, so I just came out and asked her: “Did you ever hear about anything crooked going on with that boat?”
From "Flush" by Carl Hiaasen
She also bemoaned Wamsley’s “general lack of reliability” on “issues related to the protests,” which is a polite way of saying she fibbed her face off.
From Slate ● Nov. 15, 2025
Abraham Lincoln fibbed as well, telling newspaper readers in 1862 that he was not considering emancipating the Confederacy’s enslaved people when he’d already decided to do so.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 11, 2024
Her children asked why, and she fibbed: “Oh, because I like the car.”
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 6, 2023
"It's almost time! The live event will start soon," fibbed a card keeping eager viewers on hold.
From Salon ● Apr. 17, 2023
So what if she’d fibbed a little about her pencil case?
From "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro
Some people say they've resorted to fibbing about illnesses, emigration or even prison sentences so the company will stop trying to keep them signed up.
From BBC ● Apr. 2, 2026
Stunned by her blatant fibbing, I backed off.
From MarketWatch ● Jan. 21, 2026
By the way, they also confess to occasionally fibbing about “overqualificiations” to spare job applicants’ egos.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 30, 2025
The agency accused Musk of fibbing to manipulate his company's stock prices.
From Salon ● Sep. 21, 2024
Any other day of my life I could have won a fibbing contest hands down, and that, that is what I came up with: the pathetic truth.
From "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd
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.
