Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

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

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To talk familiarly together; chat; prattle.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To talk familiarly together; to chat; to prattle.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb intransitive To speak casually with; to chat.
  • verb intransitive To confer.
  • verb intransitive, psychology To fabricate memories in order to fill gaps in one's memory.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb have a conference in order to talk something over
  • verb unconsciously replace fact with fantasy in one's memory
  • verb talk socially without exchanging too much information

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

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

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word confabulate.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Some people mistake their capacity for confabulating the truth with superb reasoning.

    August 18, 2008