narrative

EnglishEdit

EtymologyEdit

Borrowed from Middle French narratif.

PronunciationEdit

AdjectiveEdit

narrative (comparative more narrative, superlative most narrative)

  1. Telling a story.
  2. Overly talkative; garrulous.
  3. Of or relating to narration.
    the narrative thrust of a film
    • 2004 January 10, Galen Strawson, “Review: Making Stories by Jerome Bruner”, in The Guardian[1]:
      There is a deep divide in our species. On one side, the narrators: those who are indeed intensely narrative, self-storying, Homeric, in their sense of life and self, whether they look to the past or the future.

TranslationsEdit

NounEdit

narrative (countable and uncountable, plural narratives)

  1. The systematic recitation of an event or series of events.
  2. That which is narrated.
  3. A representation of an event or story in a way to promote a certain point of view.
    changing, controlling the narrative
    • 2014 October 21, Oliver Brown, “Oscar Pistorius jailed for five years”, in The Daily Telegraph (Sport)[2]:
      Yes, there were instances of grandstanding and obsessive behaviour, but many were concealed at the time to help protect an aggressively peddled narrative of [Oscar] Pistorius the paragon, the emblem, the trailblazer.
    • 2017 May 30, Francisco Navas, quoting Alexandra Bell, “'It feels important': the counter-narrative artist challenging how news is reported”, in The Guardian[3]:
      [Alexandra] Bell challenges the dominant coverage of Brown’s killing with the aim of introducing “a perspective and a narrative which is probably how a lot of people from these communities saw it go down”.
  4. (creative writing) A manner of conveying a story, fictional or otherwise, in a body of work.
    The plot is full of holes, but the narrative is extremely compelling.
    • 2015, Angus Slater, “Prophecy, Pre-destination, and Free-form Gameplay: The Nerevarine Prophecy in Bethesda’s ‘Morrowind’”, in Online: Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet[4], volume 7, →DOI, page 175:
      The player is free to create their own narrative within a much larger set of possible designed narrative options, or, given the geographic and dialogical openness of Morrowind, to refuse the creation of any narrative but their own and wander aimlessly through the game.

Derived termsEdit

Related termsEdit

TranslationsEdit

ReferencesEdit

  • narrative at OneLook Dictionary Search
  • narrative in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
  • narrative in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911

AnagramsEdit

FrenchEdit

AdjectiveEdit

narrative

  1. feminine singular of narratif

ItalianEdit

PronunciationEdit

  • IPA(key): /nar.raˈti.ve/
  • Rhymes: -ive
  • Syllabification: nar‧ra‧tì‧ve

AdjectiveEdit

narrative f pl

  1. feminine plural of narrativo

NounEdit

narrative f pl

  1. plural of narrativa

AnagramsEdit