Emily Dickinson Lexicon

AN'EC-DOTE, n. [Gr. α privative and εκδιδωμι, to publish, part. εκδοτος, given out.]

1. In its original sense, secret history, or facts not generally known. But in more common usage, a particular or detached incident or fact of an interesting nature; a biographical incident; a single passage of private life. Procopius gave the title of Anecdotes to a book he published against Justinian and his wife Theodora; and similar collections of incidents in the lives of eminent men are now common. – Encyc.
2. The relation of an incident or particular event.