An ANECDOTE usually refers to a very short story describing a person, situation, event, etc. In modern usage, anecdotes are used to spice up a speech or story, or to point out a moral or theme.
Unfortunately, the origins of the word are not quite so gracious. It seems that early Greece often found both men and women meeting and gossiping to pass the time away. These juicy tidbits about other people or events soon came to be known as anekdotos, taken from the two Greek words an (not) and ekdotos (published). Obviously, these little bits of gossip were meant to be circulated only by word of mouth, unlike today’s modern anecdotes which often find their way into print.
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