Etymology

fiction

fic·tion
F4I1C3T1I1O1N1

Today it means: Literary type using invented or imaginative writing, instead of real facts, usually written as prose. Full definition →

Middle English ficcioun ← Old French ficcion ← Latin fictiō
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The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European*dʰeyǵʰ-
  2. Proto-Indo-European*dʰinéǵʰti
  3. Proto-Italic*θingō
  4. Proto-Italic*fingō
  5. Latinfingō
  6. Latinfictiō
  7. Old Frenchficcion
  8. Middle Englishficcioun
  9. English todayfiction

From Middle English ficcioun, from Old French ficcion (“dissimulation, ruse, invention”), from Latin fictiō (“a making, fashioning, a feigning, a rhetorical or legal fiction”), from fingō (“to form, mold, shape, devise, feign”). Displaced native Old English lēasspell (literally “false story”); see feign, feint, figment.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.