fib
Americannoun
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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
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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
The fib was an easy one to tell.
From "Dread Nation" by Justina Ireland
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
Her living voice — her wit and insecurities, her vanities and fibs, the whole of her mind as she herself came to know it.
From Salon ● Feb. 9, 2025
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
This advisedly clunky emphasis on fibs and their detection is something of a Johnson trademark.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 2, 2023
The only difference between her fibs and mine are that hers are eerie—she’s got a gift for saying things that make you anxious.
From "The Pigman" by Paul Zindel
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
Blanche forced Cohen to acknowledge that he fibbed under oath during his own 2018 plea hearing about not feeling pressure to plead guilty.
From Seattle Times ● May 19, 2024
“I think he fibbed to me,” he told TMZ.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 27, 2023
"It's almost time! The live event will start soon," fibbed a card keeping eager viewers on hold.
From Salon ● Apr. 17, 2023
Room 5 always told the truth, except when they fibbed a little.
From "Ralph S. Mouse" by Beverly Cleary
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
It also has chapters now in 11 states, but not one here, so sadly there is no annual fibbing award for Washington.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 23, 2023
She didn’t believe in lying—was against it in fact—but she also didn’t feel we should go around telling people things that would make them think we were fibbing.
From "Summer of the Mariposas" by Guadalupe García McCall
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.
