Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Factoid

Okay, I am normally not a wordsmith by any means, as anyone will quickly point out. Also, I am a supporter of the evolution of language. Grammar and meanings change with time, and that will never stop. This is why "bad" for a while meant "good," why "sick" apparently means "awesome" right now, and why some other things, like the usage of "whom," disappear.

However there is one word that is used essentially incorrectly all the time. This is factoid. It is almost always used to mean "little fact" or "trivial fact." Well, the word appeared first in the 70's, coined by Norman Mailer, where he said that factoids were "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper".

In other words, it means "something which is not a fact, but sounds true, or is taken to be true because people think it is." I'm not sure why this one bothers me so. If you were to look on dictionary.com, both definitions appear, and perhaps the newer definition will be what sticks, but it sort of grates on my nerves. So I'll just keep the real definition in my head, and if someone states something to me as being a "factoid," I'll assume they're lying.

by Topher at 8:31 AM |