fabulate means to tell invented stories, often those that involve fantasy, such as fables. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
Why “fabulate” is a great word
FABULATE — [Verb] To invent or relate stories, especially in the manner of fables or folk tales. From the Latin fābulārī ("to tell stories, chat"), from fābula ("story, fable"). First attested in English in 1616. Unlike "narrate," which implies a faithful recounting, or "prevaricate," which aims to deceive, to fabulate is to weave with the benign artifice of the fireside spinner. It is the grandmother conjuring a fox that speaks in riddles, the child transmuting a scraped knee into a dragon's ambush, or the traveler sketching a legendary past for a forgotten ruin—a humble insistence that the world is made not only of what is, but of what might be whispered into being.
Etymology
From Latin fābulātus, perfect active participle of fābulor (“to tell stories, chat”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)), from fābula (“fable”).
verb
- To tell invented stories, often those that involve fantasy, such as fables.“Human fears, needs, dreams release the latent propensities of the subliminal soul, and to respond to them the fabulating imagination sets to work.”
- To relate as or in the manner of a fable.“Anyone who considers it a pleasure to compose short stories or to fabulate a tale, must remain silent and say nothing of her beauty.”
- To tell fables, to narrate with fables.“The Fort is ſo barricadoed, that it is hard ſcaling it : the refractary Rebell ſo guarded with Euill and Poyſon, ſo warded with unruly and deadly ; as if it were with Gyants in an Inchanted Towre, as they fabulate ; so no man can tame it.”
noun
- A folk story that is not entirely believable.“It is a rule, though, that each fabulate, as well as every other narrative that requires credence or pretense or at least the possibility of belief as its ingredient, is based on either a truly existing or an assumed memorate[…] or something similar.”
- A folk story that is told for entertainment, and not intended to be taken as true.“To jocular fabulates (Sherzfabulate) I place inter alia some of the “Tales of the Stupid Ogre” in Aarne’s Type Register.”