confabulate

verb

con·​fab·​u·​late kən-ˈfa-byə-ˌlāt 

confabulated; confabulating

intransitive verb

1

: to talk informally : chat

2

: to hold a discussion : confer

3

: to fill in gaps in memory by fabrication

A major characteristic of brain-damaged patients is the tendency to confabulate—to hide and dissemble about their damage.

—Peter R. Breggin

confabulation

kən-ˌfa-byə-ˈlā-shən 

noun

confabulator

kən-ˈfa-byə-ˌlā-tər 

noun

confabulatory

kən-ˈfa-byə-lə-ˌtȯr-ē 

adjective

Did you know?

There are multiple ways to confabulate. If you want to do it the original way, you’ll simply have a chat with someone. People have been confabulating with one another thusly since the early 1600s. Today, however, the word is usually used with the meaning it took on in the early 1900s, and especially in contexts relating to psychology: confabulating in this way means fabricating memories especially to fill memory gaps. In the 2000s, confabulate is taking on a new use. Artificial intelligence that produces false output is also now sometimes said to be confabulating, i.e. hallucinating. The ultimate source of this versatile word is the Latin noun fābula, which refers to a conversation or a story, and is also the root of fabulous, as well as fable.

Synonyms of confabulate

• consult
• confer
• discuss
• talk

Examples of confabulate in a Sentence

an Alzheimer's support group in which caregivers can confabulate as well as commiserate

Recent Examples on the Web

The errant or confabulated information that AI tools can generate is often referred to as hallucinations. — Sharon Bernstein, Sacbee.com, 1 Apr. 2026

These failures occurred when the AI models confabulated successful operations and built subsequent actions on false premises, highlighting the risks of depending on AI assistants that can misinterpret file structures or fabricate data to hide their errors. — ArsTechnica, 10 Sep. 2025

See above for my attempt to confabulate a story linking the three random concepts of a cat, a fire engine and a chair. — Neuroskeptic, Discover Magazine, 25 Oct. 2010

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from Latin confābulātus, past participle of confābulārī "to talk together, converse," from con- con- + fābulārī "to talk, converse, invent a story, make up a fable," derivative of fābula "talk, gossip, tale, legend"; (sense 3) translation of German konfabulieren — more at fable entry 1

Note: The psychiatric term was introduced by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939). Both Konfabulation and konfabulieren are found in his Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie (Berlin, 1916), p. 79.

First Known Use

circa 1604, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for confabulate

• abbreviate
• accelerate
• accommodate
• accumulate
• acuminate
• adjudicate
• adulterate
• affiliate
• agglomerate
• agglutinate
• alleviate
• amalgamate

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