Fabliau

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A short, farcical, often bawdy tale of a genre written in the North of France in the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries.

    "‘I’m planning a sort of fabliau comparing this place with a fascist state,’ said Sampson, ‘sort of Animal Farm meets Arturo Ui . . .’"

Synonyms

All synonyms
allegoryfablefairy talefantasyfictionfolktale

Example

More examples

"‘I’m planning a sort of fabliau comparing this place with a fascist state,’ said Sampson, ‘sort of Animal Farm meets Arturo Ui . . .’"

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Old French fabliau, diminutive of fable.

More for "fabliau"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.