Thread: Factoids
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Old 04-12-2011, 10:57 AM   #100
orlok
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK View Post
Did you know that "factoid" means "item that looks like a fact but is not a fact."

It was coined to refer to made-up blurbs in gossips rags presented as true reporting.

Like all other "-oid" words, android, meteoroid, alkaloid, it means 'similar but not the thing...'

It's a pet peeve of mine that people routinely use it incorrectly to mean "little fact."

Why not "factlet" or "factette" or just "fact?"

When you say "Here's a factoid for you..." you are saying "Here's a lie..."

. . .Or are all the statements in this thread false, and I missed the gag....?

ApK

Quote:
Originally Posted by BenG View Post
A factoid is a questionable or spurious—unverified, incorrect, or fabricated—statement presented as a fact, but with no veracity. The word can also be used to describe a particularly insignificant or novel fact, in the absence of much relevant context.[1] The word is defined by the Compact Oxford English Dictionary as "an item of unreliable information that is repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact".[2]

Factoid was coined by Norman Mailer in his 1973 biography of Marilyn Monroe. Mailer described a factoid as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper"
BenG, meet ApK. ApK, meet BenG.
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