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Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

confabulation en · NOUN

Pronunciation

  • (Southern-England) audio
  • /kənˌfæbjʊˈleɪʃən/ (General-American, Received-Pronunciation)

Etymology

From Middle English confabulacion (“conversation”), from Latin confābulātiōnem, from cōnfābulārī + -tiōnem.

Meanings

  1. (countable, uncountable) A casual conversation; a chat.
    • […] 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. 1855 January 5, Anthony Trollope, The Warden, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC:
    • The vision had roused a host of other associations, and he sat looking with new eyes at the library which, for over thirty years, had been the scene of his solitary musings and of all the family confabulations. 1920, Edith Wharton, chapter XXXIV, in The Age of Innocence, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
    • The schoolroom piano broke into all gruesome fancies; and when that failed there were confabulations in corners, with a sequel of one of them going out in the highest spirits in order to “come in” as something new. 1898, Henry James, The Turn of the Screw:
  2. (countable, uncountable) A fabricated memory believed to be true, especially in someone with dementia or with encephalopathy from advanced alcoholism.
    • 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). 2021, Pramod K. Nayar, Alzheimer's Disease Memoirs: Poetics of the Forgetting Self, Springer Nature, →ISBN, page 76:
    • Segal said another characteristic of Trump’s questionable mental acuity is confabulation. “It’s where he takes an idea or something that’s happened and he adds to it things that have not happened.” 2025 August 3, Adam Gabbatt, quoting Harry Segal, “‘He has trouble completing a thought’: bizarre public appearances again cast doubt on Trump’s mental acuity”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
  3. (countable, informal, uncountable) An assertion, statement, or text generated by a generative AI that is presented by that AI as if it were true but is in fact a made-up, false notion.

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
confabulations Number=Plur lexicographic

Coordinates

hallucination

Deriveds

confab

Relateds

fabulistic · confabulist · fabulousness · fabular · confabular · confabulator · fable · confabulatory · confabulate · fabulist · fabulism · confabulative

Synonyms

confab · hallucination

Translations (17)

bg чешене на езика (casual conversation — see also chat) · fi satuilu (fabricated memory) · bg раздумка (casual conversation — see also chat) · fi konfabulaatio (fabricated memory) · nl babbel (casual conversation — see also chat) · bg лафуване (casual conversation — see also chat) · fi sepitelmä (fabricated memory) · de Konfabulation (fabricated memory) · cmn 幻覺 /幻觉 (assertion, statement, or text generated by a generative AI) · bg конфабулация (fabricated memory) · fi juttelu (casual conversation — see also chat) · fi rupattelu (casual conversation — see also chat) · bg бъбрене (casual conversation — see also chat) · cmn 虛構症 /虚构症 (fabricated memory) · cmn 閒聊 /闲聊 (casual conversation — see also chat) · bg лафене (casual conversation — see also chat) · fi sepite (assertion, statement, or text generated by a generative AI)