fairy tale

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A fanciful tale of legendary deeds and creatures, usually intended for children.
• noun A fictitious, highly fanciful story or explanation.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A tale or story about fairies.
• noun A story as unreal and as incredible in its statements as fairies or tales about them.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun a story about magical or mythological creatures, such as fairies, elves, goblins, trolls, orcs, unicorns, wizards, dragons, etc., usually composed for the amusement of children; called also a fairy story.
• noun a false story intended to deceive or mislead, especially one involving unlikely events or situations; called also a fairy story.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A folktale featuring fairies or similar fantasy characters.
• noun An unrealistic story.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a story about fairies; told to amuse children
• noun an interesting but highly implausible story; often told as an excuse
• noun an interesting but highly implausible story; often told as an excuse
• noun a story about fairies; told to amuse children