Word Woman

It's time yet again for another mind-bending installment of Word Woman's Weekly Workout. Just like the joints in the human body stiffen up over time, neural pathways decline without new stimuli to keep them active, so let's warm up those brain cells with the word of the week:


Factoid: (fak-toyd) [noun, adjective]
Noun - A spurious or questionable fact; especially something that is popularly supposed to be true because it has been reported (and often repeated) in the media, but is actually based on speculation or even fabrication.
Adjective - Apparently factual, but actually only partly true; "factional".
The word was coined by American author Norman Mailer in 1973. In his book Marilyn (a biography of Marliyn Monroe) he defined 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." -- The Oxford Dictionary of New Words, Sara Tulloch, comp., Oxford University Press, 1991

Example: It is disheartening to see so many magazines displayed at check-out stands in grocery stores which appear to be composed entirely of factoids.