fikcio

The base arrives after the compound, which is the wrong way round and happens constantly on a frequency list.Sciencfikcio came in at rank 2,477 and its page had to say, apologetically, that fikcio "arrives later in this course, at rank 2,655, but you can read it here without waiting". Here it is. The compound is scienc- with its ending dropped plus fikcio, exactly as English assembles the same two ideas.

What it covers. Invented narrative, as against reporting or history: fikcio kaj nefikcio is the shelf division a bookshop makes. It also carries the drier legal and philosophical sense, a convenient falsehood everybody agrees to work with - jura fikcio, a legal fiction.

One root, and the pieces you can see are Latin. Fikci- is borrowed whole. There is no Esperanto prefix fi- doing work here, although the language really does have one: fi- is the prefix of moral disgust, so fidomo is a brothel and fiulo a scoundrel. A fikcio is not a fi--anything, and reading it that way would give you "a disgusting kcio", which is not a word. The genuine seam is inside Latin: fictio is the noun of fingere, to mould, and the metaphor underneath is a potter shaping clay.

In use. Fikcia is fictional and fikciulo a fictional character. Fikciigi is to fictionalise a real event. For where any of this is worth reading in Esperanto, the survey is Esperanta literaturo, and the movement's own contribution to the invented-world half of the shelf is set out on the sciencfikcio page.