Fĭc'tion, n.

n. [Lat. fictio, from fingere, fictum, to form, shape, invent, feign; Fr. fiction, Pr. ficcio, Sp. ficcion, It. fizione, finzione.]

1. The act of feigning, inventing, or imagining; as, by the mere fiction of the mind. Stillingfleet.
2. That which is feigned, invented, or imagined; especially, a feigned story, whether oral or written; a story feigned to deceive.

The fiction of those golden apples kept by a dragon. Raleigh.

3. (Law.) An assumption of a possible thing as a fact, which is not literally true, for the advancement of justice, and which the law will not allow to be disproved, so far as concerns the purpose for which the assumption was made. Burvill.
4. Any like assumption made for convenience, as for passing more rapidly over what is not disputed, and arriving at points really at issue.

Syn.—Fabrication; invention; fable; falsehood.—FICTION, FABRICATION. Fiction is opposed to what is real; fabrication to what is true. Fiction is designed commonly to amuse, and sometimes to instruct; a fabrication is always intended to mislead and deceive. In the novels of Walter Scott we have fiction of the highest order. The so-called poems of Ossian were chiefly fabrications by Mackenzie.