[GeoffC]

Dear Word Detective: Help! I thought I knew perfectly well what "factoid" means: a trivial or insignificant fact. But now I find that a lot of dictionaries consider that it means an unverified, untrue, or invented fact! I think all of this would be news to a lot of people. For example, various TV shows and newsmagazines often promote "factoids" about the subject of their program. I'm sure they have no idea that one meaning of "factoid" is a statement that isn't true. -- Melanie Nickel, via the internet.

Blame it on CNN -- they started the whole ruckus by taking a perfectly good word and twisting it.

"Factoid" is one of those rare words that were undeniably invented by an identifiable individual, in this case Norman Mailer, in his book "Marilyn," published in 1973. The Oxford Dictionary of New Words defines "factoid" thus: "A spurious or questionable fact; especially something that is supposed to be true because it has been reported (and often repeated) in the media, but is actually based on speculation or even fabrication." Norman Mailer himself defined "factoids" as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority."

Mailer invented the word by combining "fact" with "oid," a scientific suffix meaning "resembling or having the form of, but not identical to." Needless to say, "factoids" in Mailer's sense are the antithesis of serious reporting, and to accuse a journalist of trafficking in "factoids" was a grave insult, at least until CNN came along.

Unfortunately, the repetition of "factoid" in this "trivial fact" sense has taken its toll, and almost no one remembers the original meaning. Hence the secondary "trivia" definition found in most current dictionaries almost certainly will, at some point in the near future, become the primary one.

Mailer's original negative definition of "factoid" was a valuable contribution to the language on a par with George Orwell's "Newspeak," and, in this age of spin doctors, "factoid" still fills a conspicuous need. Perhaps we should petition CNN to give us our word back.

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