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START / NODE 973Present-Day English14th century–today
fiction
Invented narrative, imaginative creation, pretense, or legal assumption; borrowed through French from Latin fictio, an action of shaping, molding, or feigning.
“Fiction is historically something shaped. Latin fictio named shaping, molding, feigning, and pretense before English narrowed one major branch to invented narrative.”OPEN COMPLETE WORD DOSSIER ↗
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01
PARENT ROUTES1 REVIEWED RELATIONSHIP
Present-Day Englishfiction
invented narrative; imaginative creation; pretense; legal assumption
↑GO DEEPER
Middle English · Middle Englishficciouninvention of the mind
- SOUND CHANGE
- Middle English ficcioun develops into modern fiction through French-influenced spelling and English pronunciation.
- SEMANTIC CHANGE
- Mental invention expands into narrative, imaginative, legal, and pretense senses.
- SCHOLAR
- Merriam-Webster Editors
- CONFIDENCE
- established
- CHRONOLOGY
- First known English use is reported in the fourteenth century.
THE ASTERISK IS A PROMISE
RECONSTRUCTION IS
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