noun

• (rhetoric) A narrative in which a character, place, or event is used to deliver a broader message about real-world issues and occurrences.
• A picture, book, or other form of communication using such representation.
• A symbolic representation which can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, usually a moral or political one.
• (mathematics, category theory) A category that retains some of the structure of the category of binary relations between sets, representing a high-level generalisation of that category.