Word of the Day:

March 1, 2025

factoid

noun FAK-toyd

What it Means

A factoid is a brief and usually unimportant or trivial fact. Factoid may also refer to an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print.

// The book is really just a collection of interesting factoids.

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Factoid in Context

"Straight from the [Lake Como, Italy] hotel docks, our captain showed us around the various villas and properties dotted around the lake, peppering in some historical and pop-culture factoids, like how the idyllic Villa Balbianello was featured in the Star Wars prequel films." — Nashia Baker, Architectural Digest, 7 Dec. 2024

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Did You Know?

In his 1973 book Marilyn (about Marilyn Monroe), Norman Mailer describes factoids as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority." Mailer's use of the -oid suffix (which traces back to the ancient Greek word eidos, meaning "appearance" or "form") follows in the pattern of humanoid: just as a humanoid appears to be human but is not, a factoid appears to be factual but is not. The word has since evolved so that now it most often refers to things that decidedly are facts, just not ones that are significant.