Fictitious

How to spell fictitious

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce fictitious

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fictitious mean?

1. adjectiveInvented or imaginary rather than real; not genuine.

Fictitious in a sentence

• The witness gave a fictitious name to avoid being traced.

• The novel is set in a fictitious town that does not appear on any map.

Where does fictitious come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin fictitius, meaning 'artificial' or 'feigned', which was built on fictus, the past participle of the verb fingere, 'to shape, mould, or fashion'. The original sense was thoroughly physical: a potter shaping clay was using fingere, and the word later widened to anything formed by the imagination rather than by the hands. From there it travelled to the modern idea of something deliberately invented or made up. English adopted it in the seventeenth century, keeping the Latin -itious ending intact. The same fingere root quietly survives in the words 'fiction', 'figment', and even 'feign', and noticing that family helps explain the tricky spelling: the -ct- of fiction reappears here, followed by the soft -itious sound that fools the ear into expecting an 's'.

How the word is built

• fict- (from fingere: to form, shape, invent)
• -iti-
• -ous (adjective suffix: full of)