Crossword clues for anecdote
anecdote
- Often-amusing story
- Biographical account
- Story in a speech, perhaps
- Stand-up segment
- Speechmaker's icebreaker
- Speech starter, often
- Speech opener, at times
- Speaker's warm-up, often
- Speaker's story
- Speaker's intro, perhaps
- Sketch not drawn
- Short, amusing story
- Short illustration
- Raconteur's recital
- Part of a wedding toast, often
- Part of a raconteur's repertoire
- Part of a best man's toast, maybe
- One related to others
- Light sketch
- Humorous account
- Entertaining little tale
- Entertaining brief tale
- Cute story
- Cute oral story
- Cute little story
- Component of a wedding toast, often
- Brief, often amusing narrative
- Amusing yarn
- Amusing tale
- Amusing reminiscence
- "Not published," literally
- Personal account
- Garrison Keillor specialty
- Frequent speech starter
- Speech enlivener
- Opening of many a speech
- Short reminiscence
- Small yarn?
- Brief story that might open a speech
- Speech opener, often
- Toast lead-in, at times
- Speaker's aid
- Short account of an incident (especially a biographical one)
- Short story
- Short narrative
- Tale told by an oldster
- Brief, interesting tale
- Funny little story
- One acted (anag) — amusing reminiscence
- Worried about party supporting Birmingham Centre's story
- Short entertaining story
- Amusing story
- Amusing short story
- Upset Ant and Dec with extremely offensive story
- A comment about City Director's first story
- Stand-up bit
- Short tale
- Speechmaker's story
- Speaker's opening, often
- Personal reminiscence
- One may begin "Reminds me of the time ..."
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Anecdote \An"ec*dote\, n. [F. anecdote, fr. Gr. ? not published; 'an priv. + ? given out, ? to give out, to publish; ? out + ? to give. See Dose, n.]
pl. Unpublished narratives.
--Burke.A particular or detached incident or fact of an interesting nature; a biographical incident or fragment; a single passage of private life.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1670s, "secret or private stories," from French anecdote (17c.) or directly from Greek anekdota "things unpublished," neuter plural of anekdotos, from an- "not" (see an-) + ekdotos "published," from ek- "out" + didonai "to give" (see date (n.1)).\n
\nProcopius' 6c. Anecdota, unpublished memoirs of Emperor Justinian full of court gossip, gave the word a sense of "revelation of secrets," which decayed in English to "brief, amusing stories" (1761).
Wiktionary
n. 1 A short account of a real incident or person, often humorous or interesting. 2 An account which supports an argument, but which is not supported by scientific or statistical analysis. 3 A previously untold secret account of an incident.
WordNet
n. short account of an incident (especially a biographical one)
Wikipedia
An anecdote is a brief, revealing account of an individual person or an incident. Often humorous, anecdotes differ from jokes because their primary purpose is not simply to provoke laughter, but to reveal a truth more general than the brief tale itself, such as to characterize a person by delineating a specific quirk or trait, to communicate an abstract idea about a person, place, or thing through the concrete details of a short narrative. An anecdote is "a story with a point."
Anecdotes may be real or fictional; the anecdotal digression is a common feature of literary works, and even oral anecdotes typically involve subtle exaggeration and dramatic shape designed to entertain the listener. However, an anecdote is always presented as the recounting of a real incident, involving actual persons and usually in an identifiable place. In the words of Jurgen Heine, they exhibit "a special realism" and "a claimed historical dimension."
The word anecdote (in Greek: ἀνέκδοτον "unpublished", literally "not given out") comes from Procopius of Caesarea, the biographer of Justinian I, who produced a work entitled (Anekdota, variously translated as Unpublished Memoirs or Secret History), which is primarily a collection of short incidents from the private life of the Byzantine court. Gradually, the term "anecdote" came to be applied to any short tale utilized to emphasize or illustrate whatever point the author wished to make. Note that in the context of Estonian, Lithuanian, Bulgarian and Russian humor, an anecdote refers to any short humorous story without the need of factual or biographical origins.
The Anecdote is a full-length Azerbaijani film shot in Baku in 1989. Made in the tragic comedy genre, this film is about the dysfunctional Soviet management system in Azerbaijan SSR at the end of 1980s and about the decadence and corruption of the Soviet bureaucracy.
Usage examples of "anecdote".
I asked him to dine with me, and without mentioning the name of Madame de la Saone he told his amorous adventures and numerous anecdotes about the pretty women of Berne.
Keep up the circulation of his blood for years to come, and excite aphorism and anecdotes and dreams for the instruction and amusements by the action of his brain upon his mind.
One possibly not apocryphal anecdote claims that when a young American officer was due to return home from France, he called on Mme Lafayette to see if he could bring her husband any messages.
And how beautifully Montaigne combines the generalization with the anecdote, the homily with the autobiographical reminiscence!
The king, whose knowledge of literature was extensive, began to tell anecdotes of classical writers, quoting manuscript authorities which reduced me to silence, and which were possibly invented by him.
In the interval before supper Nina entertained me with a number of lascivious anecdotes of her experiences from the time she began her present mode of living up to the age of twenty-two, which was her age then.
They had worked together for many years and were good friends, but when they started bouncing insults off each other, scoring points, bemoaning, arguing, philosophising and regaling anyone within earshot with anecdotes and opinions, nothing could be done.
Mr Boffin, who hear it, rejoiced within himself, comforting himself with the reflection that his withers were unwrung, and thinking with what pleasure he might carry the anecdote into the farthest corners of the clubs.
King of the Sun and the Moon and the Rising Tide, et cetera, thanks for marrying me at last after sleeping with me for a thousand and one nights and begetting three children on me and listening while I amused you with proverbs and parables, chronicles and pleasantries, quips and jests and admonitory instances, stories and anecdotes, dialogues and histories and elegies and satires and Allah alone knows what else!
Brighton, twelve miles, coachee amused me with some anecdotes of persons whom we passed upon the road.
Chavigni had been ambassador at Venice thirty years before, and I knew a number of anecdotes about his adventures there, and I was eager to see what I could make out of him.
They just wanted to look at where he lived, and maybe ask a few townspeople for anecdotes about Degler so that they could report their findings to the rest of fandom at the convention.
He had many a talk, at odd times, with the glittering farceur Charles Mathews, about dramatic art, and some of this is recorded in piquant anecdotes.
I had not yet read the anecdotes of Louis XIII, king of France, but I had read Boccacio.
Crebillon had known well for fifteen years, and he related several very curious anecdotes which were generally unknown.