A Brief History of Drabbles

According to two websites, the word "drabble" comes 1971 Monty Python's Big Red Book: 'Drabble. A word game for 2 to 4 players. The four players sit from left to right and the first person to write a novel wins.'
The drabble consisted of around 50 to 80 words.

The actual game was created at Birmingham University SF Society. They declared that 100 words was best suited for this, and the game spread like wildfire. The Rules are simple, gather up your friends and the first person to write a 100 word novel (not a word more or less) wins.

Many online writers have changed the rules of the game a little. The most popular being the 100 theme (or a variation of) challenge. This game provides a set list of 'items' from 1-100 and the writer has to write 100 drabbles (there is no official word limit). Each drabble has to contain one of the items from the list.

Basically the one thing that remains the same in each explanation is that a drabble is a short story. A work of fiction.

References:

Wiki
The Drabble Project
How Drabbles Began