Confabulation
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A casual conversation; a chat. countable, uncountable
"[…] Mrs Grantly was preparing herself for a grand attack which she was to make on her father, as agreed upon between herself and her husband during their curtain confabulation of that morning."
- 2 (psychiatry) a plausible but imagined memory that fills in gaps in what is remembered wordnet
- 3 A fabricated memory believed to be true, especially in someone suffering from dementia. countable, uncountable
"For Örulv and Hydén, confabulation is ‘world-making’ (669). What the person with AD chooses to enunciate, ‘may capture something important in the way the person makes sense of his or her life and also make meaning-based connections’ (Hydén and Örulv 2009: 206)."
- 4 an informal conversation wordnet
Example
More examples"[…] Mrs Grantly was preparing herself for a grand attack which she was to make on her father, as agreed upon between herself and her husband during their curtain confabulation of that morning."
Etymology
From Middle English confabulacion (“conversation”), from Latin confābulātiōnem, from cōnfābulārī + -tiōnem.
More for "confabulation"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.