What is the literal meaning of the word Anecdote?
Anecdote literally means "unpublished" and is a folklore genre, a short oral story about a fictional or true event of topical domestic or socio-political content, with humorous or satirical coloring and an unexpected witty ending. This can be a play of words, different meanings of words, modern associations that require additional knowledge: social, literary, historical, geographical, etc.
In most cases, the authors of anecdotes are unknown. But an anecdote is best known as a short, often moralizing story about an unusual, often real event, an incident from the life of a historical person, not necessarily with the task of ridiculing it.
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