Fable

How to spell fable

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fable

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fable mean?

1. nounA short fictional story, often featuring animals, that teaches a moral lesson.

Fable in a sentence

• The teacher read a fable about a tortoise and a hare to the class.

• Each fable in the old collection ends with a tidy lesson about honesty.

Where does fable come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin fabula, meaning 'a story, a tale, or something told', which was built on the verb fari, 'to speak' or 'to tell'. The same fari root sits behind a surprising family of English words, including 'fate' (literally what has been spoken) and 'infant' (one who cannot yet speak). English took fable through Old French in the 1200s, where it already carried the sense of a short fictional story, often one with a moral lesson. Over time it narrowed in everyday use to mean the brief animal tales of the kind attributed to Aesop, where a talking creature illustrates a piece of wisdom. The quiet ending '-le' that trips up some writers is simply the Latin '-ula' diminutive worn down over centuries, and remembering the link to fabula and 'fabulous' helps fix the spelling.

How the word is built

• fab- (from Latin fari: to speak, to tell)
• -le (noun suffix)