Word.ws English Dictionary

fictionalism

fictionalism noun: the doctrine that certain concepts are simply convenient fictions.

Noun

fictionalism (countable and uncountable, plural fictionalisms)

  1. The doctrine that certain concepts are simply convenient fictions
    • But it seems to me that modal fictionalism is also incredible: normally we do not think that there are countless theories and stories besides the ones we will ever tell, much less that they are infinitely complex and infinitely long and so that it would be humanly impossible to tell them.2007 July 17, Chris John Daly, “Fictionalism and the attitudes”, in Philosophical Studies, volume 139, number 3, →DOI

Forms of fictionalism

pluralfictionalisms

Origin of fictionalism

From fictional + -ism.

Questions about fictionalism

What does fictionalism mean?
Fictionalism means the doctrine that certain concepts are simply convenient fictions.
What part of speech is fictionalism?
Fictionalism is a noun.
What is the plural of fictionalism?
The plural of fictionalism is fictionalisms.

Words near fictionalism in the dictionary

  1. fictionalised
  2. fictionaliser
  3. fictionalisers
  4. fictionalises
  5. fictionalising
  6. fictionalism
  7. fictionalisms
  8. fictionalist
  9. fictionalistic
  10. fictionalists
  11. fictionalities

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fictionalism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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