
[French, from Greek anekdota, unpublished items : an-, not; see a-1 + ekdota, neuter pl. of ekdotos, published (from ekdidonai, ekdo-, to publish : ek-, out; see ecto- + didonai, to give).]
Stacy always had an anecdote to share with her friends.
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Quotes:
"Faith! he must make his stories shorter or change his comrades once a quarter."
- Jonathan Swift
"The history of a soldier's wound beguiles the pain of it."
- Laurence Sterne
"With a tale, for sooth, he comet unto you; with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner."
- Sir Philip Sidney
"Your tale, sir, would cure deafness."
- William Shakespeare
"Life is too short for a long story."
- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
"Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us."
- Vaclav Havel
See more famous quotes about Anecdotes

| Look up anecdote in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
An anecdote is a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always presented as based a real incident[1] involving actual persons, whether famous or not, usually in an identifiable place. However, over time, modification in reuse may convert a particular anecdote to a fictional piece, one that is retold but is "too good to be true". Sometimes humorous, anecdotes are not jokes, because their primary purpose is not simply to evoke laughter, but to reveal a truth more general than the brief tale itself, or to delineate a character trait in such a light that it strikes in a flash of insight to its very essence. Novalis observed "An anecdote is a historical element — a historical molecule or epigram".[2] A brief monologue beginning "A man pops in a bar..." will be a joke. A brief monologue beginning "Once J. Edgar Hoover popped in a bar..." will be an anecdote. An anecdote thus is closer to the tradition of the parable than the patently invented fable with its animal characters and generic human figures— but it is distinct from the parable in the historical specificity which it claims.
Anecdotes are often of satirical nature. Under the totalitarian regime in the Soviet Union numerous political anecdotes circulating in society were the only way to reveal and denounce vices of the political system and its leaders. They made fun of such personalities as Lenin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and other Soviet leaders. In contemporary Russia there are many anecdotes about Vladimir Putin.[3]
The word 'anecdote'is an amusing short story (in Greek: "unpublished", literally "not given out") comes from Procopius of Caesarea, the biographer of Justinian I, who produced a work entitled Ἀνέκδοτα (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[4] to any short tale utilized to emphasize or illustrate whatever point the author wished to make.[5]
Anecdotal evidence is an informal account of evidence in the form of an anecdote. The term is often used in contrast to scientific evidence, as evidence that cannot be investigated using the scientific method. The problem with arguing based on anecdotal evidence is that anecdotal evidence is not necessarily typical; only statistical evidence can determine how typical something is. Misuse of anecdotal evidence is a logical fallacy.
When used in advertising or promotion of a product, service, or idea, anecdotal evidence is often called a testimonial and is banned in some jurisdictions.[citation needed] The term is also sometimes used in a legal context to describe certain kinds of testimony. Psychologists have found that people are more likely to remember notable examples than the typical example.
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Français (French)
n. - anecdote
Deutsch (German)
n. - Anekdote
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ανέκδοτο, εύθυμη ή σκαμπρόζικη ιστοριούλα
Português (Portuguese)
n. - anedota (f)
Русский (Russian)
рассказ, забавная история
Español (Spanish)
n. - anécdota, cuento
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - anekdot
中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
轶事, 趣闻, 秘闻, 秘史
中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 軼事, 趣聞, 秘聞, 秘史
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) حكايه نادره
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - סיפור קצר של מאורע מבדר/מעניין, מעשייה, אנקדוטה
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