confabulist

plural confabulists

1. One who confabulates; a companion with whom one chats or confers.

   ... his heaven—the organ and confabulist of angels and spirits, their ideal brother.

   1970, The People Their Rights and Liberties Their Duties and Their Interests

   2 more examples

   I knew him only as a grey-bearded sage — he was my father's friend and close confabulist! " said Hueline, with a slight smile.

   1849, Emma Robinson, Owen Tudor: An Historical Romance - Volume 2, page 26

   He's bonded Monte Alban guide, a sidewalk Sophist, Palenque wizard, brother in arms and drink confabulist, Mixtec and Zapotec, globetrotting cosmologist with answers for everything in his bag of tricks: solving problems for men floating belly-up, for doubting warriors who now scratch their heads.

   1993, Alex Blackburn, Writers' Forum, →ISBN, page 90

   Synonyms: confabulator

2. One who invents elaborate stories, especially false ones misrepresented as if they were true.

   The confabulist, who simply cannot resist making up stories, wastes an enormous amount of other people's time.

   1995, Alexander McCall Smith, Heavenly Date: And Other Stories, page 121

   2 more examples

   Oh — well, you see, that part's true. But not everything I say is true. Part of my illness. I'm a confabulist.

   1998, Sally Clark, Wasps: A Drawing Room Comedy for Distempered Times, page 33

   The confabulist loves the tools of her trade, the stream of words that is a river of stars flowing through the knowable universe, but words are only anthills and mountains, aspects from which the river is seen.

   2001, L Rogers, BC Peace, PK Page: Essays on Her Works

   Synonyms: confabulator

comparative more confabulist · superlative most confabulist

1. Involving the invention of elaborate stories.

   Why did he always come up with the most romantic and confabulist notions?

   2007, Edo Van Belkom, Robert Charles Wilson, Tesseracts Ten: A Celebration of New Canadian Speculative Fiction, →ISBN, page 10

   2 more examples

   The speculative drawings of architects raise the possibility that all architectural drawings, rather than representing a future building, are confabulist pre-enactments—that is, they tell the story of a world that may be, that could be, that might or even ought to be; but is not, and will never be.

   2016, Paul Emmons, Luc Phinney, “Introduction: homo fabula”, in Confabulations : Storytelling in Architecture

   Those days and nights, as I began to enter the shadowy timetable of The Darter's life, I found myself within a confabulist pattern that drew together barge smugglers, verterinarians, forgers, and dog tracks in the Home Countries.

   2018, Michael Ondaatje, Warlight, →ISBN, page 79