Comment by aubanel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aubanel | Hacker News Reader

Indeed it seems like replacing "hallucinate" with "confabulate" would improve understanding of the phenomenon in english, but it could cause a problem in Romance languages.

Indeed, the Latin verb "confabulor has the meaning of "discuss, converse" [0], not specifically "inventing things", and Romance languages already have words derived in sound and meaning from this classic Latin sense. For instance French already has "confabuler" meaning "speak familiarly with someone" [1]. Thus in Romance languages, this proposed usage of "confabulate" imported from the psychiatric word could be understood poorly due to preexisting similar-sounding words that do not include the notion of "making things up".

Just proposing thoughts here, not advocating for a final decision. Maybe it's still good to adopt this wording!

[0] : https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/confabulor#Latin [1] : https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9C3479

In french we use "fabuler"[1] that can be translated to "make sth up". I don't know if it's the same in other Roman language.

[1] https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9F0016

The word "confabular" comes from the Latin "confābulārī", which means "to talk together". It's derived from the prefix "con-", meaning "together", and "fābulārī", which means "to talk" or "to speak". "Fābulārī" is related to "fābula", which in Latin means "story" or "tale". Over time, the word evolved in the Romance languages, leading to the Spanish "confabular", which retains the idea of conversing or fabricating stories.

Confabulate means that in english as well. the psych meaning is very much secondary.

That's why cardinals are trapped in a "confab"

I have never heard “confabulate” in [American] English to mean anything other than “bullshitting.”

Same here. I don't know if it's correct, but I've always considered "confabulate" etymologically related to "fable", so it's always fictitious by definition.

edit: it is: https://www.etymonline.com/word/confabulate -- although both the verb fabulari and the noun fabula ultimately come from the proto root bha-, which is also the root for falar in Portuguese and hablar in Spanish (and presumably parlez in French?)

No, according to Wiktionary[0] the verb parler comes from Early Medieval Latin parabolāre, which comes from Latin parabola (which in Late Latin could have the meaning of "parable"), and that was borrowed from Ancient Greek παραβολή.

The Italian verb parlare has a similar etymology.

[0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/parler

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