Which means that OP used factoid correctly.
Comment on Put him on the cart.
papalonian@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Fun fact: the word “factoid” means a false bit of information that is being passed as fact. It doesn’t mean “a small interesting tidbit of information”.
Though I suppose the official definition will be changed since the proper one is seemingly dead
lenuup@reddthat.com 11 months ago
Dozzi92@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You know, it should be obvious, but until you brought it up here, I was guilty of thinking of it as just some colloquialism (which it very well may be). But if you think of the suffix -oid, taking “humanoid” for example, you get something that isn’t presenting itself as a human. But I didn’t come to that conclusion, I just was like, wow, they bop the Pope with a hammer.
So thanks.
Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yeah, most lexicons being descriptive rather prescriptive makes etymology one hell of a twisted labyrinth. I agree it’s important for a lot of reasons. The last thing we need right now is a State enforcing some kind of “Newspeak”
Fetus@lemmy.world 11 months ago
A really fun factoid is that factoids being false information is not actually true!
dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Ow, my brains.
KazuchijouNo@lemy.lol 11 months ago
I love when a seemingly harmless meme becomes a linguistics debate and then just pure logic
Agent641@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Factlet?