fabric [LME] Fabric comes from Latin fabrica ‘something skilfully produced’. A fabric was originally ‘a building’, and then ‘a machine or appliance’ [E17th] and ‘something made’, which led to the main current meaning ‘cloth, textile’ [M18th]. The related verb fabricate [LME] originally just meant ‘to manufacture, construct’, but towards the end of the 18th century it began to be used in the sense ‘make up facts that are not true’. See also forge.