Search us!

Search The Word Detective and our family of websites:

This is the easiest way to find a column on a particular word or phrase.

To search for a specific phrase, put it between quotation marks.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments are OPEN.

We deeply appreciate the erudition and energy of our commenters. Your comments frequently make an invaluable contribution to the story of words and phrases in everyday usage over many years.

Please note that comments are moderated, and will sometimes take a few days to appear.

 

 

shameless pleading

 

 

 

 

Whole cloth / Fabrication

Cloak of deceit.

Dear Word Detective:  I was just reading an old column of yours on the phrase “made it up out of whole cloth” to mean “lying” and wondered, given the textile reference, if there is any connection between “fabrication” and “fabric.” — Tim Maguire.

That sounds like the foundation of a bad pun, but it’s actually a good question.  Of course, that presumes that there is such a thing as a “good” pun, an assertion I would contest.  For some reason, probably born of a childhood trauma now buried in a cobwebbed corner of my psyche, I loathe puns. Feh.

Don’t mind me; I’m in a bad mood because I have to type this with an index finger badly bitten by an ungrateful cat.  Long story.  Where were we?   Yes, there is a family connection between “fabric” and “fabrication,” but the connection between “fabric” in the “cloth” sense and “fabrication” in the “lie” sense is very indirect, akin to that between two second cousins who  only met once, as children.

But before we proceed, we’d better take a moment to explain “to make something up out of whole cloth,” meaning to invent a story that contains not even a smidgen of truth.  “Whole cloth” has been used since the 15th century to mean a large piece of cloth in its original state, not yet cut up for sewing.  As a metaphor in use since the 19th century for a story completely invented out of thin air, “from whole cloth” carries the same sense of “starting from the absolute beginning” as is found in the phrase “starting from scratch,” which originally referred to a scratch or line drawn on the ground as the starting line for a race.

In the case of “fabric” and “fabrication,” the connection is a common root, the Latin noun “faber,” meaning a craftsman such as a carpenter or blacksmith.  The derivative “fabrica” meant “workshop” or “product,” and the verb “fabricare” meant “to make or build.”

That verb “fabricare” eventually gave us the English word “fabricate,” which appeared in the late 16th century with the meaning of “to make, construct or manufacture” anything that requires skill, but by the early 20th century “fabricate” had taken on the specific meaning of “to semi-finished materials into a finished product,” as one might “fabricate” bumpers from rolled steel.  (Whatever happened to steel bumpers, anyway?)  Meanwhile, back in the 18th century, that “make or construct” sense had led to the use of “fabricate” to mean “constructing” a story that was utterly untrue, which gave us “fabrication” meaning just such a lie.

The original meaning of “fabric,” when it first appeared in English in the late 15th century (derived via the French “fabrique” from the Latin “fabrica”) was, literally, “building”  (“A vaulted fabric without wood or iron-work, three stories high,” 1756).  “Fabric” went on to mean pretty much anything that could be built or manufactured, but settled down in the mid-18th century to being used in our modern sense to mean “textile, cloth.”  Interestingly, so complete has this narrowing process been that even figurative references to “the fabric of the universe,” etc., are usually based on this “textile” sense of “fabric” (“Faith in the Unseen and reverence for the Divine … are inwoven in the very fabric of our nature,” 1877).

So there is a connection between “fabric” and “fabrication,” but it has nothing to do with “whole cloth” and making stuff up.  Honest.

6 comments to Whole cloth / Fabrication

  • rental ubud villa

    Hellow man, I browsing around through blogs search some information & come your blogs. Honestly, I`am impressed by articles which you post on this blog. I think that u have very well understood on this topic and wrote it with very good ways. I think that you have writing talent on yourself. I`am bookmark this page, would come here again. You`re my friend and you`re rocks man!!!

  • I believe the “whole cloth” reference is to the fact that the false claim or lie was created without reason or reference to truth, as in a suit hacked out of cloth without a pattern or design. Thanks for your website, by the way – don’t stumble this way often, but I always enjoy it when I do.

  • Topi

    How come manufactured doesn’t mean handcrafted?

  • Patricia Blackwell

    In my childhood I associated “made of whole cloth” with the tale of the emperor’s new clothes, which were, of course, nonexistent except in the king’s own mind. Just as truth is nonexistent in a lie or fabricated story.

  • Harmonious

    The author of the novel, “The Winner,by Gritz” had once told me that religion was made of whole cloth. That’s another way of putting it. But it does fill a need.

Leave a Reply

  

  

  

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Please support
The Word Detective


unclesamsmaller
by Subscribing.

 

Follow us on Twitter!

 

 

 

Makes a great gift! Click cover for more.

400+ pages of science questions answered and explained for kids -- and adults!

FROM ALTOIDS TO ZIMA, by Evan Morris