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by fungicide 2421 days ago
Fun fact: The "oid" suffix in factoid means "like", or "resembling". So a factoid is not a true fact, but a statement resembling a fact. The word "factoid" was coined by Norman Mailer to mean "an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print." So it is a source of great irony that the meaning of the word has been inverted by the press to mean a trivial but true fact. Historians of the future may have a fun time trying to figure out if our factoids are a true fact that we consider trivial, or a fact that we know is false but is believed to be true.