anecdote

plural anecdotes · alternative anecdota · alternative anecdoton · alternative anecdotum

1. countableuncountableA short account of a real incident or person, often humorous or interesting.

   tell an anecdote

   2 more examples

   relate a short anecdote

   Like all travellers, he is full of anecdote, and has at his command the rarest news of the time. […] Generous, convivial, and full of anecdote, the mercantile agent is a good companion, and his conversation never fails to make glad and jocund the society of that otherwise dullest of places, an English stage coach.

   1839, “Commercial Travellers”, in The Merchants’ Magazine, and Commercial Review, volume I, New York, N.Y.: Freeman Hunt, […], pages 30–31

2. countableuncountableAn account which supports an argument, but which is not supported by scientific or statistical analysis.
3. countableuncountableA previously untold secret account of an incident.

present singular third person anecdotes · participle present anecdoting · participle past anecdoted · past anecdoted · alternative anecdota · alternative anecdoton · alternative anecdotum

1. ambitransitiveTo tell anecdotes (about).

   Bob anecdoted the circus he and Jimmy had seen that afternoon.

   1986, Elliot L. Gilbert, Best Short Stories from the California Quarterly, 1971-1985, page 101

   1 more example

   They were all men of the same set, knowing one another intimately, and knowing the same people; so they fell to talking and anecdoting in such pleasant wise that dinner-time approached […]

   1879, Eustace Clare Grenville Murray, That Artful Vicar