fictioneer
Americannoun
Usage
What does fictioneer mean? A fictioneer is a fiction writer, especially one who puts out a lot of work considered mediocre or low quality. The word fictioneer is most often applied to writers who churn out the kind of stories usually found in cheap, mass-market paperbacks, especially ones that snobs consider lowbrow “genre fiction,” such as romance novels, mysteries, or science fiction. However, it can also be used in a more neutral way as simply another (more fun) word for a fiction writer. Example: Many highly regarded novelists started their careers as fictioneers who wrote under pseudonyms and published anything they could to scrape together a living.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of fictioneer
Explanation
A fictioneer is someone who writes stories, especially a writer who produces a large volume of stories for mass consumption. While words like author or novelist carry a sense of literary prestige, fictioneer is sometimes used for writers who produce fiction quickly for popular markets. There is nothing inherently negative about writing for commercial success, but the term can be used disparagingly to describe writers of mass-produced or formulaic fiction. Even so, such writing requires a lot of skill and imagination, and some writers embrace the term as a badge of honor.
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.
He's also a prolific blogger; an essential criteria for today's ambitious pulp fictioneer, when your readership are only ever a tweet away.
From The Guardian ● May 29, 2012
If a novelist invented a character like Lord Byron, he would be set down as an opportunistic fictioneer with an eye on the bestseller list.
From Time Magazine Archive
But short stories do not pay well, and Bates, like any sensible fictioneer, wants to be paid as well as read.
From Time Magazine Archive
But Playwright Franken, a veteran ladies' magazine fictioneer, either does not know or thinks it would not be nice to reveal that what she is handling is the very serious subject of adult infantilism.
From Time Magazine Archive
The lowly soap opera this week enlisted the services of a superexpensive fictioneer.
From Time Magazine Archive
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.
