The corpus record — Latin

fabella

fabella · f

a brief narrative

Generated live from the audited Latin corpus — every figure on this page is a database query, not prose from memory.

Where it lives

Fabulae Aesopiae 13 · 11.85/10k
Antoninus Caracallus 1 · 4.9/10k
Carus et Carinus et Numerianus 1 · 3.77/10k
Divus Claudius 1 · 3.37/10k
Maximini Duo 1 · 1.84/10k
Marcus Antoninus Philosophus 1 · 1.82/10k
Gordiani Tres 1 · 1.8/10k
De Consolatione ad Polybium 1 · 1.76/10k
Pro M. Caelio 1 · 1.18/10k
Epistulae 1 · 1.01/10k
Alexander Severus 1 · 0.94/10k
Octavius 1 · 0.86/10k

Densest 12 of 28 attested works shown, by occurrences per 10,000 attested tokens.

What it meant

fābella — Lewis & Short

fābella, ae, f.dim.fabula,

I a brief narrative, a short history, story (class.).

I In gen.: nihil debet esse in philosophia commentariis fabellis loci, Cic. Div. 2, 38, 80: vera, Phaedr. 2, 5, 6: in fabellam excedere, Sen. Ep. 77 med.—

II In partic.

A A short fable, a tale, Phaedr. 4, 7, 22: Haec (anus) tibi fabellas referat, etc., Tib. 1, 3, 85: aniles, Hor. S. 2, 6, 78.—Prov.: narrare fabellam asello, to preach to a stone, Hor. Ep. 2, 1, 200.—

B A short play, Cic. Q. Fr. 2, 16, 3: haec tota fabella, quam est sine argumento! id. Cael. 27, 64.

In the wild

fabellae Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 5.11.19
fabella Historia Augusta, Antoninus Caracallus 8
fabellas Phaedrus, Fabulae Aesopiae 2.prologus.2
fabella Phaedrus, Fabulae Aesopiae 2.5.6
fabellas Tibullus, Elegiae 1.3.85
fabella Phaedrus, Fabulae Aesopiae 3.17.13

6 of 46 attestations shown.

Where it came from

No etymology authority pointer is recorded for this lemma yet — an honest gap, not an omission.

Latin text and lemmatization derived from the Perseus Digital Library (canonical-latinLit), CC BY-SA 4.0. Lewis & Short (public domain) via Perseus. This derived data is shared under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 license.