Myth \Myth\, n. [Written also mythe.]

[Gr. my^qos myth, fable, tale, talk, speech: cf. F. mythe.]

1. A story of great but unknown age which originally embodied a belief regarding some fact or phenomenon of experience, and in which often the forces of nature and of the soul are personified; an ancient legend of a god, a hero, the origin of a race, etc.; a wonder story of prehistoric origin; a popular fable which is, or has been, received as historical.

2. A person or thing existing only in imagination, or whose actual existence is not verifiable.

As for Mrs. Primmins's bones, they had been myths these twenty years. --Ld. Lytton.

Myth history, history made of, or mixed with, myths.

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)