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Perhaps 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

• sbmassey 10y ago
  Well 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 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. 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.