FABLES Synonyms: 79 Similar and Opposite Words

fables

noun

plural of fable

as in allegories

a story intended to teach a basic truth or moral about life this classic Christmas film is essentially a fable showing how every person's life has meaning and touches the lives of others

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as in myths

a traditional but unfounded story that gives the reason for a current custom, belief, or fact of nature according to an ancient fable the waters of the mountain spring are the tears of a woman weeping for her lost children

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as in tales

something that is the product of the imagination the stories of lost cities of gold may have been fables deliberately concocted by Native Americans to dupe the Spanish

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

as in lies

a statement known by its maker to be untrue and made in order to deceive the fables that people tell themselves to rationalize their failures and shortcomings

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of fables That Niall finds Ruben so alluring is natural to Gadd, who believes the notion of a valiant male figure has been bred into everyone via fables and fairy tales. —

Carlos Aguilar, Los Angeles Times, 23 Apr. 2026 Fortnum & Mason does not need a goose from Aesop’s fables to have a golden egg. —

Air Mail, 4 Apr. 2026 Both fables and translations are forms of constrained writing. —

Jan Steyn, The Dial, 10 Mar. 2026 The Easter Bunny is on the lookout for the best egg, and along the way, his friends tell him tales and fables. —

Lynnette Nicholas, Parents, 9 Mar. 2026 The performance felt both virtuosic and repulsive, a goulash of hype, sloganeering, and calls to violence spiked with in-jokes, shaggy-dog anecdotes, and populist fables, all of it seductive and—in our dangerous era—familiar. —

Emily Nussbaum, New Yorker, 26 Feb. 2026 Animated family films have been a staple of entertainment culture for nearly a century and offer a rich catalog of adventures, fables, fairy tales and dramas. —

David Faris, TheWeek, 27 Jan. 2026 Or throw it back with some age-old fables or fairy tales. —

Maya Silver, Outside, 20 Jan. 2026 Nurture the geese who lay the golden eggs One of Aesop’s most famous fables is the tale of the goose that laid a golden egg every day until its owner killed it in an attempt to get all the gold at once. —

Sally Percy, Forbes.com, 7 Jan. 2026

Recent Examples of Synonyms for fables

Noun

But if these movies are progressive allegories of beings transcending their differences, then Hoppers is a surprisingly blunt pushback to that notion.

— David Sims, The Atlantic, 26 Mar. 2026
Chandran’s reference to allegories suggests the adaptation is leaning into the arc’s political dimensions — the civil war, the manipulation of a nation by a Warlord of the Sea, and the cost of leadership.

— Hanna Wickes, Miami Herald, 16 Mar. 2026