Narratio

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A detailed account or narration of events that is often used for storytelling purposes
2. The presentation of a sequence of actions or occurrences in a structured form, usually in a literary context
3. A method of conveying a story or information through an organized and coherent sequence of events

Etymology: In Latin, "narratio" was the ordinary word for a telling or account, built from "narrare," "to relate," which itself derives from "gnarus," "knowing" or "acquainted with." The connection is older than the modern meaning suggests: a narrator was originally someone who made something known, and "gnarus" is also the source of "ignore" in its original sense of "not to know." Rhetoricians in ancient Rome gave the term a specific technical sense as the part of a speech that set out the facts of the case, the statement of what had happened before the argument began. English took the word in the early 1600s, and it carried this legal and rhetorical flavour with it. Its modern sense of a full, sequential account of events developed later, and it has largely been replaced in everyday English by "narrative," which entered through French and is the more common form today. "Narratio" survives mainly in specialist contexts, such as the formal statement of facts in a legal pleading or the introductory section of a Roman-style oration.

Synonyms: narration, storytelling, account, narrative, report

Antonyms: silence, concealment, omission