Wiktionary

apologue

English edit

Etymology edit

Borrowed from French apologue, from Latin apologus from Ancient Greek ἀπόλογος (apólogos, “story, tale, fable”) from ἀπό- (apó-, “off, away from”) + λόγος (lógos, “speech”).

Pronunciation edit

Noun edit

apologue (countable and uncountable, plural apologues)

  1. A short story with a moral, often involving talking animals or objects; a fable.
    • 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 7, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:
      "Still I must bear my hard lot as well as I can—at least, I shall be amongst gentlefolks, and not with vulgar city people": and she fell to thinking of her Russell Square friends with that very same philosophical bitterness with which, in a certain apologue, the fox is represented as speaking of the grapes.
    • 1891, Edward Burnett Tylor, Primitive Culture, page 409:
      […] but though the mythic hero may thus be made to figure in a moral apologue, an imagination so little in keeping with his unethic nature jars upon the reader's mind.
  2. (rhetoric) The use of fable to persuade the audience.

Derived terms edit

Related terms edit

Translations edit

a short story with a moral, often involving talking animals or objects

French edit

Etymology edit

From Latin apologus, from Ancient Greek ἀπόλογος (apólogos).

Noun edit

apologue m (plural apologues)

  1. apologue

Further reading edit

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