Aesop's fables
2
4.8
- proper noun
- /ˈiːsɒps ˈfeɪbəlz/
- Literature
- People loved Aesop's fables because they were short, easy to remember, and they taught a lesson or moral.
Examples
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Aesop's fables would do the same thing.
Blog text (2) -
One popular story in Aesop's fables illustrates the importance of being industrious rather than lazy.
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Take a look at Aesop's fables or the Brothers Grimm.
Blog text (2) -
The most famous fables in world literature would be, as noted, Aesop's fables.
Academic text (2016) -
Aesop's fables were so popular that they became well-known all over the world.
Fiction book (2000) -
The point applies to all fiction, whether or not it has overt moral lessons like those found in Aesop's fables.
Academic text (2008) -
Children often enjoy reading Aesop's fables because they are entertaining and teach valuable life lessons.
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Many cultures around the world have adapted Aesop's fables to convey their own moral teachings.
Surface Forms
Morphology
Aesop's + fable
The noun 'fable' clearly signals a moral story, and the possessive 'Aesop's' transparently indicates authorship, so a learner who knows both constituents can infer this refers to stories by someone named Aesop. However, recognizing that this is a specific, culturally established corpus attributed to the ancient Greek storyteller (with typical animal characters and well-known morals) requires extra world knowledge of the proper name, so the expression is not fully predictable from its parts.
Etymology
Aesop's fables comes from Aesop, a storyteller who lived long ago in Greece and who told very short tales where animals acted like people to show a lesson. Because these simple animal stories end with a clear moral, Aesop's fables now means short stories that 'teach a lesson'.