confabulate

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If birds confabulate or no;

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Definitions (7)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. intransitive verb To talk casually; chat.
  2. intransitive verb Psychology To fill in gaps in one's memory with fabrications that one believes to be facts.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (1)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

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Examples (38)

  • This is especially obvious in split-brain research, when the left hemisphere's "interpreter" finds itself sequestered, and can be enticed to simply confabulate by way of accounting for right-hemisphere behavior. —  Integral Options Cafe
  • PARING-TIME ANTICIPATED I shall not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau If birds confabulate or no; 'Tis clear that they were always able To hold discourse, at least in fable; And e'en the child who knows no better Than to interpret, by the letter, A story of a cock and bull, Must have a most uncommon skull. —  The Book of Humorous Verse
  • [FN#32] The peculiar place where the guardians of the tomb sit and confabulate is the Dakkat al-Aghawat (eunuch's bench) or Al-Mayda-the table-a raised bench of stone and wood, on the North side of the Hujrah. —  Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah ; Meccah — Volume 1
  • Write poetry, don't confabulate! an Obama poem for those whose poetic appetites were not satisfied: —  Blog updates
  • Buddhism (& Taoism) has insisted, for centuries, that we confabulate our entire —  New Scientist - Earth
 

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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin cōnfābulārī, cōnfābulāt- : com-, com- + fābulārī, to talk (from fābula, conversation; see fable).

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from Latin confabulatus, past participle of confabulari (later F. confabuler = Spanish Portuguese confabular = Italian confabulare), talk together, from com-, together, + fabulari, talk, from fabula, discourse, fable: see fable.
 

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/kənˈfæbjuleɪt/
by American Heritage

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