Other forms: fables
A fable is a short tale with talking animals and a moral at the end. Aesop's fables, tell a fable, the moral of the fable.
The moral is stated rather than left to the reader, which is what marks the form out. Aesop's are the oldest we have in Europe and were told for centuries before anybody wrote them down. The word also means a story that is simply untrue.
1nounfableA short tale with talking animals and a moral at the end.
“In the fable of the tortoise and the hare, the slow tortoise wins the race.”
fable is a story.
Latin fabula means a story, from fari, to speak. Fate and fame come from the same verb.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰeh₂-
Latin
fābula
Old French
fable
English, today
fable
Built from
From Middle English -, borrowed from Old French fable, from Latin fābula, from for (“to speak, say”) + -bula (“instrumental suffix”). See ban, and compare fabulous, fame. a doublet of fabula.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA