Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use fable in a sentence

29 example sentences · noun, verb

Fable means a fictitious narrative intended to enforce some useful truth or precept, usually with animals, etc. as characters; an apologue. Prototypically, Aesop's Fables. Example: “In the fable, the maiden had to find a catskin coat, a coat made of catskins.”

Examples of fable by meaning

verbTo make up; to devise, and speak of, as true or real; to tell of falsely; to recount in the form of a fable.

  • Fabled by the daughters of memory.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 2: Nestor]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part I [Telemachia], page 24

More sentences with fable

  • In the fable, the maiden had to find a catskin coat, a coat made of catskins.From the entry catskin
  • Fables are handed down from age to age.From the entry hand down
  • This fable is a capsulization of a certain moral philosophy.From the entry capsulization
  • The e is silent in fable.From the entry silent
  • Gheorghe Zamfir’s sprightly panpiping gives “The Tall Blond Man” the feel of a fable.2015 August 29, J Hoberman, The New York Times. From the entry panpiping
  • In contrast to this are the flat, one-dimensional characters found in fables.1999, Kimberly Kimbell-Lopez, Connecting with traditional literature. From the entry one-dimensional
  • Another name made to stand sponsor for fables was Bidpai, said to have been an Oriental philosopher.1938, Ollie Depew, Children's Literature by Grades and Types, page 31. From the entry Bidpai
  • He who has not seen Peiping has really not seen the China of fable and history.1934, “Excursion From Shanghai”, in All About Shanghai: A Standard Guidebook, Oxford University Press, published 1983, →ISBN, →OCLC, page…. From the entry Peiping
  • Wondrously weird and a skosh too long, “Good Manners” is a dark Brazilian fable of animalistic passions and social isolation.2018 July 26, Jeannette Catsoulis, “Review: ‘Good Manners’ Is a Twisty Werewolf Tale From Brazil”, in New York Times. From the entry skosh
  • Those that have a fable for good music combined with excellent food will love the unique concept of this club!2012, "Exclusive Hot-Spot", Vienna Deluxe, Winter 2012, page 67. From the entry have a fable for
  • The turns have tabled on this glorious fable.2010, Ross M. Hudson, “No Air Play”, in Paid Admission for One: Collected Poems and Prose, […], page 33. From the entry the turns have tabled
  • “My mother, just like your wife, had a fable for Gaelic names, and Seamus is the Gaelic version of James.”2009, Wilfried F. Voss, The Bleeding Hills, Copperhill Media Corporation, →ISBN, page 38. From the entry have a fable for
  • The lovers she seems to pursue with her figurative language in fact retreat under the barrage of similes, metaphors and fables.2005 May 1, “The Sea of Love”, in New York Times. From the entry figurative
  • From liar to murderer, like in the Æsop fable.1991, Stephen Fry, The Liar, chapter eleven, § I, page 316 (1992 paperback ed., Mandarin Paperbacks). From the entry Æsop
  • Helmut de Boor offers a similarly narrow definition of the nature of morals to be drawn from fables.1983, Marianne Powell, Fabula Docet. From the entry bispel
  • But, unlike the Robin Hood fable, where only maid Marian was a bowswoman, the watchword of the Blackhawk Bowhunters is “togetherness.”1961 August 27, “Blackhawk Bowhunters Gather In Greenwood Behind Onalaska H.S.”, in The La Crosse Sunday Tribune, volume 57, number 102…. From the entry bowswoman
  • The story is both a fable of power and, as Clark explains, the beginning of the understanding of history as a foreordained "sequence of hegemonies".2021 August 10, Andrew Anthony, “Prisoners of Time by Christopher Clark review – bravura examination of political power”, in Katharine…. From the entry foreordained
  • His story was a fable you told dominants in training to stress the importance of comprehending the depths of your submissive's needs.2011, Jayne Rylon, Mistress's Master, page 65. From the entry dominant
  • Instead of a crazed Brooksian farce about life on the bottom rung, Life Stinks turns out to be a surprisingly low-key Chaplinesque fable.1991 August 9, “Summer Comedies”, in Entertainment Weekly. From the entry Brooksian
  • They are Brechtian fables, using simple plots, filled with contradictions and ironies, that force us to reexamine our political and moral ideas.1977 April 16, Michael Bronski, “'Mother Kuster' — Fine Fassbinder”, in Gay Community News, page 9. From the entry Brechtian
  • The author of this fable, which sounds somewhat Winnie the Poohish, is Ted Allen, a Canadian, welcomed by the B.B.C. as a discovery.1954 December 6, L[eonard] Marsland Gander, “TV and Radio Topics: One Foot in Each TV Camp”, in The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post…. From the entry Winnie the Poohish
  • All those tales that came clicking over the wireless of the capture of huge stores of grain and oil were fables out of whole cloth.1917, Sydney Brooks, “What Great Britain is Doing”, in National Geographic. From the entry whole cloth
  • Every time we pant, or press, or swallow, we welcome into not just our delicate biology but into those cherished fables, too, the ecological influence of the exposome.2025 August 4, David Wallace-Wells, “You Are Contaminated”, in The New York Times. From the entry exposome
  • "Metamorphoses . . ." is the title of a book of telltales (or serialised fables) written by Lucius Apulei¡us, a neo-platonist priest in the second century A.D.2012, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, The Origins of Life, page 130. From the entry telltale
  • Fables have their own time island entertainments or fragments of embodied life refractions light and dark recoverings of race and memory passionate elusive by-blows of a richer being.2004, Donald Smith, A Long Stride Shortens the Road: Poems of Scotland. From the entry recovering
  • Travelers in the antique land of the genre fable will find themselves confronted not perhaps by a wreck of Ozymandian proportions, but still with a sizable selection of rubble.2002, Niklas Holzberg, The Ancient Fable: An Introduction, page 1. From the entry Ozymandian
  • Who knows also, but that the human character may undergo strange mutations from quadrupedian sympathy, and that some modern Pasiphae may rival the fables of old.1993, Marc Shell, “Pasiphae, or On Vaccination and Vaccimulgence”, in Bestia: Yearbook of the Beast Fable Society, volumes 4-5, page 34. From the entry vaccimulgence
  • Gerry Lampert and Gerald Donaldson A full-bodied flow of light and lively photos, cool facts and smooth satisfying fables - a first class brouhaha of Canadian beer-lore through the ages.1975, Saturday Night. From the entry beer-lore

Meaning of fable

  1. noun A fictitious narrative intended to enforce some useful truth or precept, usually with animals, etc. as characters; an apologue. Prototypically, Aesop's Fables.
  2. noun Any story told to excite wonder; common talk; the theme of talk.
  3. noun Fiction; untruth; falsehood.

Full definition of fable

Questions about fable in a sentence

How do you use fable in a sentence?
Fable is used as a noun and verb. For example: “In the fable, the maiden had to find a catskin coat, a coat made of catskins.”
What is a short sentence with fable?
“Fabled by the daughters of memory.”
What does fable mean?
Fable means a fictitious narrative intended to enforce some useful truth or precept, usually with animals, etc. as characters; an apologue. Prototypically, Aesop's Fables.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fable (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this page: “How to use fable in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/fable. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.