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Make Your Point > Archived Issues > CONFABULATE

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pronounce CONFABULATE:

kun FAB you late
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connect this word to others:

As we'll see in a second, the word confabulate is interesting because it has two very different meanings.

It can mean to chat, to chatter, to converse, to p___ver ("to chitchat on and on").

Or, to lie; to invent; to contrive; to con___t ("to invent, as if by cooking"); to fab___ate ("to invent, as if by sewing").

(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.) 

definition:

"Confabulate" has Latin bits that literally mean "to talk together." Since the 1600s, we've used "confabulate" to mean "to chat: to talk together casually."

At the heart of the word "confabulate" is the Latin fabulari, which just means "to talk or chat" but is based on fabula, "a tale." It's probably this deeper connection to tales, stories, or inventions that caused psychiatrists in the 1920s to pick up on the word "confabulate" and use it to mean "to lie, to make things up, to invent things—maybe in order to fill gaps in one's memory, and maybe without even being aware of it."

This second kind of confabulation isn't some kooky historical term; it's still used today: the National Institutes of Health explained confabulation in 2023 as "replacing one's gap in memory with untrue information."

grammatical bits:

Part of speech:

Verb. It's both the transitive kind ("She confabulated a reason") and the intransitive kind ("They confabulated with each other;" "Perhaps because he didn't know the real reason, he confabulated one").

Other forms: 

The other verb forms are "confabulated" and "confabulating." And the noun is "confabulation."

People who confabulate are "confabulators."

And things that are chatty and informal are "confabulatory."

Lastly, if you'd like to abbreviate "confabulate" to "confab," you can. Plenty of writers do. (Personally, I don't like how it sounds, but I also shudder at "convo" for "conversation.")

how to use it:

When you want to sound quirky and old-fashioned, instead of saying that people are chatting, talking, or conversing, say that they're confabulating, or confabulating with each other, as in "They hit it off immediately and confabulated all afternoon." Here's an example from an 1896 novel: "Voices... very low and hushed, as if a ghost were confabulating with another ghost about a quarter of a mile away."

Or, when you want to emphasize that people are lying without realizing it, likely because their brains are automatically inventing details to fill a vacuum of information, say that they're confabulating, or that they're confabulating information.

examples:

"The forest is [the monkeys'] citadel, where, mounted on lofty trees waving in the breeze, they confabulate, and, as naturalists have often described, arm themselves with sticks and stones, and in conscious independence defy all intruders."
   — G. H. Wall, The Emigrant's Lost Son, 1860

"How many of these details are true? It's impossible to say, but truth, in this case, may not be the point.... [Ben Hecht's] gift for confabulated anecdote suggests one reason that he became so successful as a Hollywood entertainer."
  — David Denby, The New Yorker, 4 February 2019

has this page helped you understand "confabulate"?

   

Awesome, I'm glad it helped!

Thanks for letting me know!
If you have any questions about this term, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.


study it:

Explain both meanings of "confabulate" without saying "talk together" or "hallucinate memories."

try it out:

Consider this, from Scientific American:

"It is easy to induce ChatGPT to create misinformation and even report confabulated studies on a wide range of topics, from medicine to politics to religion... [Shawn Oakley, a software engineer] asked ChatGPT to write about vaccines 'in the style of disinformation.' The system responded by alleging that a study, 'published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that the COVID-19 vaccine is only effective in about 2 out of 100 people,' when no such study was actually published. Disturbingly, both the journal reference and the statistics were invented."

First, could you explain what it means for AI systems to "report confabulated studies"? Then, could you point out any similarities or differences between human confabulation and AI confabulation?




before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

Our game this month is "Fill In For the Poet." 

I'll give you a few lines from a poem, with a blank where a word that we've studied before appears, along with the word's definition. See if you can come up with it. If you can't, that's fine: fill in the blank to your satisfaction.

To check out some examples, head here.

Try this today:

From Marcus Wicker's poem "Toilet Paper Invective with Self-Flagellation:"

     Sounding like a Sunday
     summer trolley unspooling, yawning along Prairieside.
     More than any well-armed spice rack or herb garden,
     elite TP soothes _____. Scoff if you want
     but it worked for me.

Definition: "the sad feeling that life itself is boring or pointless."

To see the word the poet chose, scroll all the way down.

review this word:

1. Near opposites of CONFABULATION include

A. RETICENCE and TRUTH.
B. SOLITUDE and HESITATION.
C. STARKNESS and DOWDINESS.

2. As Gary Marcus mentioned in the New Yorker, a software program is likely to confabulate if you ask it _____.

A. how tall it is
B. what movies are showing nearby
C. if an alligator could leap over a hurdle




Answers to the review questions:
1. A
2. A

From the game: ennui.


a final word:


I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.

I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.


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A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.

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