fabricate
Americanverb (used with object)
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fabricates,
present (3rd person singular)
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fabricated,
past participle, past
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fabricating
present participle
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to make by art or skill and labor; construct.
The finest craftspeople fabricated this clock.
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to make by assembling parts or sections.
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to devise or invent (a legend, lie, etc.).
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to fake; forge (a document, signature, etc.).
verb
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to make, build, or construct
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to devise, invent, or concoct (a story, lie, etc)
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to fake or forge
Synonym Usage
See manufacture.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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fabricatesimple
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fabricatessimple
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have fabricatedperfect
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has fabricatedperfect
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am fabricatingprogressive
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are fabricatingprogressive
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is fabricatingprogressive
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have been fabricatingperfect progressive
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has been fabricatingperfect progressive
Past
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fabricatedsimple
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had fabricatedperfect
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was fabricatingprogressive
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were fabricatingprogressive
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had been fabricatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of fabricate
First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English, from Latin fabricātus “made,” past participle of fabricāre; see fabric, -ate 1
Explanation
Do you like to construct mini airplanes from kits? Work on an assembly line? Piece together Ikea furniture? Then you certainly know how to fabricate, or to put together, things. While fabricate might mean the physical act of construction, it can also mean constructing a falsehood. Watch out — those well versed in the art of fabrication might have an ulterior motive. In the movies, the bad cops sometimes fabricate evidence to make the good guy look guilty. When you tell the teacher the dog ate your homework, you’ve fabricated a pretty silly excuse. So if you’re going to fabricate the truth, get some better material!
Vocabulary lists containing fabricate
Advanced English Words
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Fake It 'Til You Make It: Synonyms for "False"
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "F"
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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:
County’s district attorney and the State Bar after The Times reported last fall that some of its clients said they’d been paid to sue, and, in some cases, fabricate their claims against the county.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2026
"This nonequilibrium fabrication approach enables us to fabricate materials from alloy vapor to a solid, introducing a significant number of dislocations in CoAl," Zhang said.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 31, 2026
This also helps explain the rise of a new class of influencers, who reach audiences with direct-address, short-form video, which is much harder to fabricate with AI.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 21, 2026
And why MedPac — an independent body overseen by leading healthcare professionals from across all parts of the industry, from doctors to nursing organizations to health insurers themselves — would fabricate these numbers is unexplained.
From MarketWatch ● May 28, 2026
“If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. But don’t fabricate some story out of a misguided desire to pacify or impress me.”
From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., or TSMC, fabricates roughly 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductor chips.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 13, 2026
Exiled by Astoria to the garage, Hampton fabricates his special drill as the family watches from afar.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 16, 2025
Now his custom-made creations, which he designs and fabricates after work in his garage in Port Chester, N.Y., are featured in those same lowrider magazines.
From New York Times ● May 19, 2024
To print a new material from scratch, one must typically set up to 100 parameters in software that controls how the printer will extrude the material as it fabricates an object.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 8, 2024
Although the chemist may hope to make eventually all the substances which protoplasm fabricates, and will probably do so, he can only build them up by the most complicated processes.
From Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 2 by James Marchant
The Fort Irwin fighting climaxed with a predawn attack on a fabricated city, Razish, a relic of training for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2026
According to prosecutors, Rush "fabricated a highly classified program to justify the acquisition of luxury real estate, which he then intended to sell for personal profit."
From Barron's ● Oct. 6, 2026
Fundamental support for those stocks is broadening out, with manufacturing backlogs ramping up across machinery, fabricated metals and other categories, and manufacturing data showing a buildup in orders, strategists said.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 5, 2026
However, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in London said the accusation was "imaginary and purely fabricated".
From BBC ● Oct. 4, 2026
She thrust at me the uniform I had fabricated, now pressed like new, along with a pair of regulation shoes.
From "Not Nothing" by Gayle Forman
Clavicular himself has been accusing the girl of fabricating her claims to get revenge for being rejected by him, an accusation echoed online by many of his fans.
From Salon ● Sep. 25, 2026
Some of the previously unreported incidents included models concealing or fabricating information, the ChatGPT-maker said in a blog post on Wednesday.
From BBC ● Sep. 17, 2026
Singh worked with Jyoti Katoch, an associate professor of physics who specializes in fabricating devices from such materials.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 3, 2026
During that time, he made a slew of enemies — from mob figures who accused him of fabricating evidence to fellow law enforcement officials who described him as a glory-seeking loose cannon.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026
He specialized, though, in making new ones, sometimes assembling the popular one-cylinder McIntyre Imp cycle-cars, sometimes fabricating new vehicles entirely of his own contrivance.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
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.
