Apologue
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A short story with a moral, often involving talking animals or objects; a fable. countable, uncountable
""Still I must bear my hard lot as well as I can—at least, I shall be amongst gentlefolks, and not with vulgar city people": and she fell to thinking of her Russell Square friends with that very same philosophical bitterness with which, in a certain apologue, the fox is represented as speaking of the grapes."
- 2 a short moral story (often with animal characters) wordnet
- 3 The use of fable to persuade the audience. countable, rhetoric, uncountable
Example
More examples""Still I must bear my hard lot as well as I can—at least, I shall be amongst gentlefolks, and not with vulgar city people": and she fell to thinking of her Russell Square friends with that very same philosophical bitterness with which, in a certain apologue, the fox is represented as speaking of the grapes."
Etymology
Borrowed from French apologue, from Latin apologus from Ancient Greek ἀπόλογος (apólogos, “story, tale, fable”) from ἀπό- (apó-, “off, away from”) + λόγος (lógos, “speech”). Equivalent to apo- + -logue.
More for "apologue"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.