fabulation

American  

[fab-yuh-lay-shuhn] / ˌfæb yəˈleɪ ʃən /

noun

plural

fabulations

1. the act or product of fabulating.

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Explanation

A fabulation is a made-up story or a lie, especially a far-fetched one. If you break a window and blame it on your badly behaved pet rabbit, everyone will know right away it’s a fabulation, so don’t even try. The noun fabulation is related to the verb fabulate, meaning "to tell a tall tale," from the Latin root fabula, meaning "a story or tale." Realistic fiction that includes dreamlike or fantastic elements as if they were real is also called fabulation. And in psychiatry, fabulation is a symptom of mental illness in which a person tells stories they’ve invented but believe are true. In all these cases, the stories are far-fetched and unreal, but told as if they are or could be true.

Example Sentences

Mixing American history with wild fabulation, and parental grief with Buddhist spirituality, the book’s weirdness and originality helped smuggle through its schmaltzy moralizing about selflessness and empathy.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 23, 2026

Titled “Mary Magdalene,” it mixes fact and fiction, as in general seems to be Davis’ wont as a natural-born storyteller, always refining her tale through fabulation and embellishment.

From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 9, 2025

She likened her approach to critical fabulation, the scholar Saidiya Hartman’s term to describe her own method of writing Black histories by imagining beyond the archive.

From New York Times • Jul. 2, 2021

It doesn't connect to a single observable thing in the world — it's sheer fabulation.

From Salon • May 15, 2021

On the other hand there is both greater variety and greater distinction in the characters, a more developed fabulation and a wonderful deepening and refinement of emotional description.

From The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 04 Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes by Francke, Kuno