Unrelated to what you are citing, but I believe a “factoid” is something that looks like a fact but is not. Like how a planetoid looks like a planet but isn’t one.
I only realized this myself decades after using the term factoid due to pages in highlights for kids.
This is a British vs American English thing. In British English a “factoid” is something that looks true but isn't. In American English “factoid” is a synonym for trivia--something that is true, but of minor importance.
> In British English a “factoid” is something that looks true but [ ... ]
may or may not be true.
Wikipedia has it as "an item of unreliable information that is repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact." after the original USofAmerica coinage by Norman Mailer.
In Commonwealth countries (Australia, Canada, UK) two decades past we used it on intelligence forums as the name for atomic snippets of information released by companies via stock exchanges, company reports, PR .. each nugget being an atomic fact like paragraph linked back to a source that asserted that fact to be true, but to be taken as potentially incorrect.
Literally the very next line: "Since the term's invention in 1973, it has become used to describe a brief or trivial item of news or information."
The intended meaning by Norman Mailer never took on in the states.
Literally you asserted:
> In British English a “factoid” is something that looks true but isn't.
I responded that
In British English a “factoid” is something that looks true but may or may not be true.
.. there's a difference.
So, a factoid being sometimes true, but not always... Is a factoid.
That’s arguable.
This sounds like a factoid to me.
Jokes aside, what do we actually do in this scenario, when the same word has opposite meanings?
In my opinion, it’s always best to err on caution and use another word if possible (“short fact” instead?).
Because I have seen this factoid discussion before…
A wonder how different people will interpret "a couple of factoids" then!
This is only true if “American English” means English spoken by people of low education or as a second language.
The other meaning is a small or trivial bit of (true) information.
I thought the second definition came about from continual misunderstanding of the word, like how literally no longer means literally.
BTW, what is the new word to use when one literally means literally?
There is none. The word has been misused to the point of ambiguity being an accepted part of its definition, and we are all worse off for it. The language is now less expressive, and you need to use more words to add context and remove ambiguity when you really do mean "literally" in the literal sense.
‘Actually’ is what I’ve heard most often.
Use literally. It still means literally. Language has all kinds of things like sarcasm, exaggeration, and metaphor that change the way a sentence should be interpreted, but the meaning of each word remains the same.
You add “quite” before “literally”.
Just prefix the sentence with “literally literally (not literally literally)”
Gen Z uses the very awkward "unironically".
that too, will often get used ironically
[flagged]
Sure, but that’s how language works. Lots of words that we use in modern English have drifted away from their original meaning.
Language is the shared meaning between people, so if lots of people understand something the same way… then thats what the word means now
The curious thing is that Norman Mailer coined the term about 1970. Is drift accelerating, or do words so new lack the stability of the old?
I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s that new words are less stable than old ones.
In the same way that if you want to predict which authors will be well known in 400 years, your best bet is on authors that we currently know from 400 years ago. Better to bet on Shakespeare and Aristotle, than e.e.cummings and T.S. Eliot
A word coined in the 1970s won’t be nearly as entrenched in its meaning with the public as an older word.
So, that’s my suspicion. New words are more prone to drift than old words
Quite that factoid. How do we know which it is? ;p
Guess it goes both ways... which is kinda worse.
I really like to call those factlets, but that's probably just me.
Other examples I like to trot out: Android is not really a man, Asteroid is not really a star, Meteoroid is not really a meteor.
Factoids (true or not) seem to have special appeal for people who like to socialize with others by knowing things - the Cliff Clavens of the world. It has an overtone of superficiality along with triviality.
“A factoid is either an invented or assumed statement presented as a fact, or a true but brief or trivial item of news or information.”
Literally a useless word on its own now that the definition evolved this way... many such cases unfortunately.
Funny that the word "literally" have evolved in a similar way