apologue

Borrowed from French apologue, from Latin apologus from Ancient Greek ἀπόλογος (apólogos, “story, tale, fable”) from ἀπό- (apó-, “off, away from”) + λόγος (lógos, “speech”).

apologue (countable and uncountable, plural apologues)

1. a short story with a moral, often involving talking animals or objects; a fable
   • 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Chapter 7:

     "Still I must bear my hard lot as well as I can—at least, I shall be amongst gentlefolks, and not with vulgar city people": and she fell to thinking of her Russell Square friends with that very same philosophical bitterness with which, in a certain apologue, the fox is represented as speaking of the grapes.

2. (rhetoric) use of fable to persuade the audience

• apologetic

apologue m (plural apologues)

1. apologue