Dictionary

confabulist en · ADJ

Meanings

1. Involving the invention of elaborate stories.
   • Why did he always come up with the most romantic and confabulist notions? 2007, Edo Van Belkom, Robert Charles Wilson, Tesseracts Ten: A Celebration of New Canadian Speculative Fiction, →ISBN, page 10:
   • The speculative drawings of architects raise the possibility that all architectural drawings, rather than representing a future building, are confabulist pre-enactments—that is, they tell the story of a world that may be, that could be, that might or even ought to be; but is not, and will never be. 2016, Paul Emmons, Luc Phinney, “Introduction: homo fabula”, in Confabulations : Storytelling in Architecture:
   • Those days and nights, as I began to enter the shadowy timetable of The Darter's life, I found myself within a confabulist pattern that drew together barge smugglers, verterinarians, forgers, and dog tracks in the Home Countries. 2018, Michael Ondaatje, Warlight, →ISBN, page 79:

Forms

Coordinates

fabulist

confabulist en · NOUN

Meanings

1. One who confabulates; a companion with whom one chats or confers.
   • I knew him only as a grey-bearded sage — he was my father's friend and close confabulist! " said Hueline, with a slight smile. 1849, Emma Robinson, Owen Tudor: An Historical Romance - Volume 2, page 26:
   • ... his heaven—the organ and confabulist of angels and spirits, their ideal brother. 1970, The People Their Rights and Liberties Their Duties and Their Interests:
   • He's bonded Monte Alban guide, a sidewalk Sophist, Palenque wizard, brother in arms and drink confabulist, Mixtec and Zapotec, globetrotting cosmologist with answers for everything in his bag of tricks: solving problems for men floating belly-up, for doubting warriors who now scratch their heads. 1993, Alex Blackburn, Writers' Forum, →ISBN, page 90:
2. One who invents elaborate stories, especially false ones misrepresented as if they were true.
   • The confabulist loves the tools of her trade, the stream of words that is a river of stars flowing through the knowable universe, but words are only anthills and mountains, aspects from which the river is seen. 2001, L Rogers, BC Peace, PK Page: Essays on Her Works:
   • The confabulist, who simply cannot resist making up stories, wastes an enormous amount of other people's time. 1995, Alexander McCall Smith, Heavenly Date: And Other Stories, page 121:
   • Oh — well, you see, that part's true. But not everything I say is true. Part of my illness. I'm a confabulist. 1998, Sally Clark, Wasps: A Drawing Room Comedy for Distempered Times, page 33:

Forms

Relateds

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

Synonyms

confabulator · confabulator