Fabulate

fabulate
verb, transitive. To relate an event or events as a fable or story.
verb, intransitive. To relate untrue or invented stories.

Detective Carson looked up from the report he was reading and glared at the rookie.

“I can’t believe you said such a thing to him,” he barked. “You were leading him. Didn’t they teach you anything?”

“I don’t think that’s true, Detective,” Officer Smith protested. “I felt it was important to establish the suspect’s wherabouts at the time of the murder. He was hesitating. All I did was suggest a list of choices.”

“That’s exactly what you never do!” Carson exploded. “If a suspect seems unsure of how to answer a question, you keep your mouth shut and wait. At all cost, you outwait him. The silence will make him nervous. Then, he’s more likely to blurt out something useful. Giving him suggestions does nothing but enourage him to fabulate. Once he starts doing that, our chances of getting the truth out of him diminish.”

Smith stared at his superior silently and, Carson thought, a little sadly.

“What?” Carson asked.

“Do you spend your free time reading a dictionary, sir? So you can intimidate people with words we’ve never heard before?”

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.