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 mechanical resonator used in the experiment was built with chip fabrication techniques.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 22, 2026
"This is, of course, a total fabrication," he said.
From Barron's ● Sep. 6, 2026
Paint maker PPG has introduced a fire-resistant coating called Steelguard 951 that can be applied in a fabrication shop before the steel is erected.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 1, 2026
Authorities later said that this was a complete fabrication by Bu.
From BBC ● Sep. 1, 2026
These triumphant landings were due in considerable part to the great skill invested in their design, fabrication and testing, and to the abilities of the spacecraft controllers.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
Mundubile, who has since gone into hiding, rejected the allegations as "total fabrications".
From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026
The ubiquity of such fabrications does not make it any less dangerous to a democratic society.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
The judiciary is getting increasingly nervous about AI fabrications becoming part of the judicial record.
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
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.
