4 ms·
Quick FYI - factoid: a false fact that is repeated often enough to become accepted as true.
by timje1 10y ago
Quick FYI - factoid: a false fact that is repeated often enough to become accepted as true.
- cgriswald 10y agoYour little factoid is an example of the definition of factoid you're describing. But there are other definitions of factoid and I suspect the most common one is along the lines "small tidbit of information".
- cheiVia0 10y agoActually, that's the factoid. According to Wikipedia [1]: > The term was coined originally in 1973 as a neologism by American writer Norman Mailer to mean a "piece of information that becomes accepted as a fact even though it’s not actually true, or an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print." Since its creation in 1973 the term has evolved from its original meaning, in common usage, and has assumed other meanings, particularly being used to describe a brief or trivial item of news or information. So it is a factoid that "factoid" means something that is true. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoid
- bluejekyll 10y agoPerhaps we should disambiguate the two: factoid, brief fact. Infactoid, brief seemingly true fact that is not due to repeated use. It's not literally as bad as the figuritive misuse of literally, where literally has come to mean figuratively and literally... This one I fight all day long.
- sbmassey 10y agoWell it is just a fairly recently invented word, sure, but it is rather telling that it was apparently CNN that jumped on the word and used it to mean 'trivial fact'
- bluejekyll 10y agoWell, it was a reporter inside CNN, just a person like us, who through repeatedly hearing factoid assumed that it meant what it sounds like. Ironically, maybe this was the intention of the way this word was derived. It seems like it should mean a brief/small fact, but in fact it means an untrue fact, therefore serving as a perfectly recursive example of itself.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> Well, it was a reporter inside CNN, just a person like us, who through repeatedly hearing factoid assumed that it meant what it sounds like. "Factoid" does mean what it sounds like (that is, it is a simple application of the common suffix "-oid" to the root "fact", both in their usual senses.) The use CNN latched on to is not what it sounds like.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> Perhaps we should disambiguate the two: factoid, brief fact. But the "-oid" suffix doesn't mean "small", it means "like or resembling". So "factoid" being something that is not, but superficially resembles, a fact makes sense. A "factoid" being a "brief fact" does not. "Factlet" would be a sensible word for a brief fact.
- repsilat 10y ago>> So it is a factoid that "factoid" means something that is true This is a little clever: it's true by whichever definition you choose, and the preceding text does not clearly prefer one or the other. Like http://bash.org/?10958 http://bash.org/?10958 -- it's funny when you know C, but it's funnier when you also know UNIX.
- Alterlife 10y agoI feel dumb :-/ ... Could you explain why it's funnier if you know UNIX?
- geofft 10y agoThe convention is for UNIX processes to return 0 on success and a non-zero value (often 1) on failure. This means that the UNIX shell "if" statement tests to see if the return value of the program it runs is zero. Therefore, the UNIX "true" command is int main() {return 0;} and the "false" command is int main() {return 1;} -- despite the C convention being the exact opposite.
- anthonybsd 10y agoWhat you are thinking of is called "factlet".
- zeveb 10y ago-oid is a suffix indicating falseness, e.g. an android is a false man, and asteroid is a false star — and a factoid is a false fact. 'Factlet' would be the right word for a tiny fact.