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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Relevance

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 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 Geminis have a tendency to speak of fables to protect themselves or to make their lives seem more fulfilling. —

Lisa Stardust, PEOPLE, 15 Dec. 2025 His movies — farces, fables, experiments — reside in surreal worlds of their own. —

Jake Coyle, Boston Herald, 24 Oct. 2025 Will there be fables about musical sand dunes on Mars? —

Literary Hub, 22 Oct. 2025 Gossip fed the frenzy of the Salem Witch Trials and has been the subtext of one too many fables where mischief masks moral rot. —

Oriel Feldmanhall, Time, 6 Oct. 2025

Recent Examples of Synonyms for fables

Noun

His canvases are populated by allegories.

— Philip Martin, Washington Post, 7 Jan. 2026
In these allegories of dehumanization, greed, and hope, Marshall takes an unvarnished view of his subjects, one that doesn’t sugarcoat the past or succumb to nostalgia for a mythical, precolonial Golden Age.

— James Meyer, Artforum, 1 Jan. 2026