Meaning of fictional in English

fictional

adjective

/ˈfɪk.ʃən.əl/ uk

/ˈfɪk.ʃən.əl/

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imaginary:

a fictional story

fictional characters

Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples

imaginary

imaginaryOur daughter had an imaginary friend when she was six.
made-upThe comedian started with some obviously made-up stories about hanging out with the Queen.
make-believeSome politicians seem to live in a make-believe world where everything revolves around their interests.
non-existentThese accounts are used to sell fake or non-existent goods.
fantasticHer books were filled with magicians and fantastic creatures.

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SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

True, real, false, and unreal

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(Definition of fictional from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of fictional

fictional

Having deaf role models, whether they are real or fictional, has a powerful influence on deaf youth.

From Huffington Post

He's also pretty sure that one of the totally fictional characters from the show would be unhappy about it too.

From Wired

But you also know the writers are going to write fictional stuff.

From NOLA.com

The larger real-life story may be tragic, but the reader feels little when these fictional characters die.

From Washington Post

But thankfully, these two people turn out to be fictional.

From NPR

However, this was no fictional mystery; it was real life.

From TIME

If you dig deep into any character, fictional or non-fictional, you should be able to find both elements.

From Billboard

How would you describe the intersection of the personal and the fictional in this book?

From Huffington Post

This is not to say hip-hop has never embraced its fictional heroes.

From The Atlantic

And interestingly, not everything about the fictional fungus is too far from reality.

From Business Insider

Some fictional figures have become so iconic, that many are still unaware they never existed in the first place.

From New York Daily News

The camera served to create and manage a relationship between the audience and the fictional action onscreen.

From A.V. Club

This dystopian world in which children are sent into an arena to fight to the death is, in fact, fictional, imaginary, fantastical.

From Huffington Post

But whatever their fictional origins, these props were inspired by objects from our world.

From WIRED

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

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