From Google n-gram, it seems to me like the idea of nonfiction is a modern addition to English [1]. Since this roughly corresponds with the huge explosion of co

From Google n-gram, it seems to me like the idea of nonfiction is a modern addition to English [1]. Since this roughly corresponds with the huge explosion of communications technologies (as you'd probably expect, since once information storage and transmission become cheap you need better ways to categorize it), I wouldn't be surprised to find that in many languages you just import the word as a loan from English rather than coming up with your own word. 1. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=non+fiction&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cnon%20fiction%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=non+fiction&ye...