Fickle
(Fic"kle) a. [OE. fikel untrustworthy, deceitful, AS. ficol, fr. fic, gefic, fraud, deceit; cf. facen
deceit, OS. fkn, OHG. feichan, Icel. feikn portent. Cf. Fidget.] Not fixed or firm; liable to change; unstable; of
a changeable mind; not firm in opinion or purpose; inconstant; capricious; as, Fortune's fickle wheel. Shak.
They know how fickle common lovers are.
Dryden. Syn. — Wavering; irresolute; unsettled; vacillating; unstable; inconsonant; unsteady; variable; mutable; changeful; capricious; veering; shifting.
Fickleness
(Fic"kle*ness) n. The quality of being fickle; instability; inconsonancy. Shak.
Fickly
(Fic"kly) adv. In a fickle manner. [Obs.] Pepys.
Fico
(||Fi"co) n.; pl. Ficoes [It., a fig, fr. L. ficus. See Fig.] A fig; an insignificant trifle, no more than
the snap of one's thumb; a sign of contempt made by the fingers, expressing. A fig for you.
Steal! foh, a fico for the phrase.
Shak. Fictile
(Fic"tile) a. [L. fictilis. See Fiction.] Molded, or capable of being molded, into form by art; relating
to pottery or to molding in any soft material.
Fictile earth is more fragile than crude earth.
Bacon.
The earliest specimens of Italian fictile art.
C. Wordsworth. Fictile ware, ware made of any material which is molded or shaped while soft; hence, pottery of any
sort.
— Fic"tile*ness, n. — Fic*til"i*ty n.
Fiction
(Fic"tion) n. [F. fiction, L. fictio, fr. fingere, fictum to form, shape, invent, feign. See Feign.]
1. The act of feigning, inventing, or imagining; as, by a mere fiction of the mind. Bp. Stillingfleet.
2. That which is feigned, invented, or imagined; especially, a feigned or invented story, whether oral or
written. Hence: A story told in order to deceive; a fabrication; — opposed to fact, or reality.
The fiction of those golden apples kept by a dragon.
Sir W. Raleigh.
When it could no longer be denied that her flight had been voluntary, numerous fictions were invented
to account for it.
Macaulay. 3. Fictitious literature; comprehensively, all works of imagination; specifically, novels and romances.
The office of fiction as a vehicle of instruction and moral elevation has been recognized by most if not
all great educators.
Dict. of Education. 4. (Law) An assumption of a possible thing as a fact, irrespective of the question of its truth. Wharton.
5. 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 Sir Walter Scott we have fiction
of the highest order. The poems of Ossian, so called, were chiefly fabrications by Macpherson.
