confabulation

American  

[kuhn-fab-yuh-ley-shuhn] / kənˌfæb yəˈleɪ ʃən /

noun

1. the act of confabulating; conversation; discussion.

   One night, over a beer, Jake and I got into a confabulation on the world and life in general, and Jake's affairs in particular.

2. Psychiatry, Psychology. the replacement of a gap in a person's memory by a falsification that they believe to be true.

   The report concluded that while the information elicited under hypnosis may be accurate, it may also include confabulations and pseudomemories.

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Other Word Forms

• confabulatory adjective

Etymology

Origin of confabulation

First recorded in 1490–1500; from Late Latin confabulātiōn- (stem of confābulātiō ) “conversation,” equivalent to confābulāt(us) ( confabulate ) + -iōn- noun suffix; -ion

Explanation

If you're chatting away for hours to your old college friend who you haven't seen in years, that's a confabulation — a personal, often rambling and generally wide-ranging conversation. A second, slightly sinister and less common meaning for confabulation is a false memory that someone creates to fill out gaps where real experience has been too traumatic to recall. As with the more common and happier meaning, both types of confabulation generally imply a good deal of creative, free-wheeling association.

Example Sentences

This isn’t the same as confabulation, or making a false memory, because what is recalled really happened.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 17, 2025

Although she has not examined Mr. Biden, Ms. Dodson said some of his stories sound similar to confabulation.

From Washington Times • Aug. 25, 2023

The over-the-top confabulation drove Modernists mad and made Post-Modernists exult: the style wars were on.

From New York Times • Nov. 30, 2018

"So the question is: If there's something awry going on, was there hypnosis? Are they using confabulation?"

From Salon • Sep. 25, 2018

But this episode was symptomatic: even his love for me involved extending the fabric of his psychosis and confabulation.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee