Other forms: anecdotes
An anecdote is a short amusing true story from somebody's life. Tell an anecdote, a funny anecdote, full of anecdotes.
The truth of it matters — an invented one is a story rather than an anecdote — and the point is usually to illustrate rather than to entertain alone. The plural anecdotes is also used dismissively of evidence: the plural of anecdote is not data. Note anecdotal, which in research means based on personal accounts and is a warning rather than a description.
1nounanecdoteA short amusing true story from somebody's life.
“At dinner, Grandpa told a funny anecdote about his first day in the army.”
anecdote is a short story.
Greek anekdota means things unpublished — an- plus ekdotos, given out. The word first named unpublished memoirs, and the sense of a short story came from that.
Proto-Indo-European
*deh₃-
Ancient Greek
ἀνέκδοτος — accounts unpublished
French
anecdote
English, today
anecdote
Built from
Late 17th c., from French anecdote, from Ancient Greek ἀνέκδοτος (“accounts unpublished”), from ἀν- (“not, un-”) + ἔκδοτος (“published”), from ἐκδίδωμι (“I publish”), from ἐκ- (“out”) + δίδωμι (“I give”). Virtually identical cognates in other European languages – French anecdote, German Anekdote, Spanish anécdota, among others.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA