you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 7 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

but I use the factoid all the time

My favorite "factoid" is that the -oid part originally means "resembling," like a humanoid is something that only looks human, so technically a factoid would be something that only resembles fact. However, I'm not a dirty prescriptivist and I understood perfectly what you meant, so please carry on.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Presciptivism is where it's at, broseidon! I use factoid for when something seems like a fact, but you can't verify it right then. I know the internet often uses it for something quoted so much that people take it as fact even though it's false.

    Wikipedia just hates us all. I don't want it to be a brief truth, waaah!

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    I hate the concept of "brief truth". The Germans probably have a word for it. things can stop being true. Everything is a brief truth on a long enough timeline. By this definition "the moon exists" is a factoid because very briefly from now (on a cosmological timeline) that's practically already false. Bah!

  • source
  • parent