Definition:
A short account (or narrative) of an interesting or amusing incident, often intended to illustrate or support some point. Adjective: anecdotal. See also:
Etymology:
From the Greek, "unpublished items"Examples and Observations:
- "Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story."
(Alice Munro) - "From its beginning the anecdote has acted as a leveling device. It humanizes, democratizes, acts as a counterweight to encomium. Perhaps that is why it flourishes best in countries that, like Britain and the United States, enjoy a strong democratic tradition."
(Clifton Fadiman, ed., The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, 1985) - "In [Ralph Waldo] Emerson's later years his memory began increasingly to fail. He used to refer to it as his 'naughty memory' when it let him down. He would forget the names of things, and have to refer to them in a circumlocutory way, saying, for instance, 'the implement that cultivates the soil' for plow. Worse, he could not remember people's names. At Longfellow's funeral, he remarked to a friend, 'That gentleman has a sweet, beautiful soul, but I have entirely forgotten his name.' Perhaps most touching was his term for umbrella--'the thing that strangers take away.'"
(Reported in Clifton Fadiman, ed., The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, 1985) - "The writer makes his living by anecdotes. He searches them out and carves them as the raw materials of his profession. No hunter stalking his prey is more alert to the presence of his quarry than a writer looking for small incidents that cast a strong light on human behavior."
(Norman Cousins)
Pronunciation: ANN-ik-dote
