The word anecdote comes from Greek: "unpublished", "not given out".

An anecdote is a brief, revealing account of an individual person or an incident: "a story with a point." Occasionally humorous, anecdotes differ from jokes because their primary purpose is not simply to provoke laughter but to reveal a truth more general than the brief tale itself. Anecdotes may be real or fictional.

Here is an example: "There was something elusively whimsical about Einstein. It is illustrated by my favorite anecdote about him. In his first year in Princeton, on Christmas Eve, so the story goes, some children sang carols outside his house. Having finished, they knocked on his door and explained they were collecting money to buy Christmas presents. Einstein listened, then said, "Wait a moment." He put on his scarf and overcoat and took his violin from its case. Then, joining the children as they went from door to door, he accompanied their singing of 'Silent Night' on his violin." (Banesh Hoffman, "My Friend, Albert Einstein." Reader's Digest, January 1968)

Anecdotal evidence is an informal account of evidence in the form of an anecdote. The term is often used in contrast to scientific evidence, as evidence that cannot be investigated using the scientific method.

六级/考研单词: anecdote, differ, provoke, tale, fiction, eve, overcoat, violin, digest, seldom, investigate