fabrication
Americannoun
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fabrications
plural
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the act or process of fabricating; manufacture.
-
something fabricated, especially an untruthful statement.
His account of the robbery is a complete fabrication.
Synonym Usage
See fiction.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of fabrication
First recorded in 1475–1500; from Latin fabricātiōn- (stem of fabricātiō ). See fabricate, -ion
Explanation
A fabrication is something made up, like a lie. Telling your boss that the subway broke down when in fact you just forgot to set your alarm is a fabrication. The word fabrication was originally used to talk about manufacturing or construction, and it referred to the act of assembling something. Tires and steering wheels are necessary materials for automobile fabrication. Nowadays, the word fabrication is usually used to refer to the act of coming up with a story out of thin air. In this sense, a book of fiction is a fabrication, as is the lie you tell your girlfriend to explain why you forgot her birthday (again).
Vocabulary lists containing fabrication
A Web of Lies
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"Diary of a Wimpy Kid" by Jeff Kinney
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Bronx Masquerade
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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:
The photo was a fabrication, generated by AI.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026
Viet Tan called their arrest a "blatant fabrication intended to conceal the fact that the Viet Tan members were abducted in Cambodia and forcibly taken to Vietnam".
From BBC ● Sep. 29, 2026
With its high-quality computer chip fabrication plants, Taiwan is a crucial part of the U.S. economic and security supply chain.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 24, 2026
The mechanical resonator used in the experiment was built with chip fabrication techniques.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 22, 2026
Ultimately, when Snyder was pressed on his figure of 3 million homeless, he admitted that it was a fabrication.
From "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" by Steven D. Levitt
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Mundubile, who has since gone into hiding, rejected the allegations as "total fabrications".
From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026
Your first line of defense against these fabrications?
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 19, 2026
Most AI fabrications may not even come to the attention of litigants or judges, especially in state courts.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 27, 2026
As good as these models are at sounding like an all-knowing person, they also regularly make believable, authoritatively-worded fabrications known as hallucinations.
From Barron's ● Feb. 6, 2026
The older I got, the more I realized that my happy-Mom memories were often fabrications invented to make me feel better about her being chronically unhappy.
From "Please Ignore Vera Dietz" by A.S. King
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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.