Fakelore
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Manufactured folklore presented as if it were genuinely traditional. uncountable
"Behind all this was the mythy Paul Bunyan, that giant lumberjack from the North Woods who bestrode entire counties in a single step while accompanied by the equally gigantic Babe the Blue Ox. To be sure, as with other heroes of American fakelore — bear-wrestling Davy Crockett, coyote-raised Pecos Bill, river-boating Mike Fink — there lingered about Paul Bunyan an aroma of frontier development and chamber-of-commerce boosterism."
Example
More examples"Behind all this was the mythy Paul Bunyan, that giant lumberjack from the North Woods who bestrode entire counties in a single step while accompanied by the equally gigantic Babe the Blue Ox. To be sure, as with other heroes of American fakelore — bear-wrestling Davy Crockett, coyote-raised Pecos Bill, river-boating Mike Fink — there lingered about Paul Bunyan an aroma of frontier development and chamber-of-commerce boosterism."
Etymology
Blend of fake + folklore.
More for "fakelore"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.