Noun

(en noun)

A written composition of moderate length exploring a particular issue or subject.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-01

, author=Katie L. Burke , title=Ecological Dependency , volume=101, issue=1, page=64 , magazine= citation , passage=In his first book since the 2008 essay collection Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature , David Quammen looks at the natural world from yet another angle: the search for the next human pandemic, what epidemiologists call “the next big one.”}}

(obsolete) A test, experiment; an assay.

An attempt.

* 1988 , James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom , Oxford 2003, p. 455:

This was Lee's first essay in the kind of offensive-defensive strategy that was to become his hallmark.

Noun

(en noun)

Literary type using invented or imaginative writing, instead of real facts, usually written as prose.

The company’s accounts contained a number of blatant fictions .

I am a great reader of fiction .

(uncountable) Invention.

The butler’s account of the crime was pure fiction .