fabrication
Americannoun
-
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:
Producing the device required Gong and the facility's staff to experiment with different fabrication methods.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 28, 2026
He had spent more than a decade remodeling homes as a general contractor and also had experience in metal fabrication from a job building race cars.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 25, 2026
“It does come with complexity, the materials, fabrication and machining,” said Ambrose.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 21, 2026
Without memory-chip fabrication capabilities, China’s domestic semiconductor industry faced a critical supply-chain chokepoint.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 18, 2026
Possibly nobody ever talked like that in real life, it was all a fabrication from the beginning.
From "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
I worked as a journalist at NBC News and CNN, and later as head of news at Meta, working with the team that built systems to distinguish credible news articles from fabrications.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 22, 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 Brigitte Bardot Foundation said it was aware of "crude fabrications" being advertised online alongside claims the proceeds will go to the animal welfare charity.
From BBC ● Jan. 4, 2026
These same internal stirrings also predisposed him to regard all perfectly symmetrical narratives or stories preaching an obvious moral message and populated by larger-than-life heroes as utter fabrications.
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
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.
