> addernoid

:)


The equivocation was actually m’esteemed friend Mr B:
I agree with Father Steve and the Southrons that factoid should and maybe does mean not quite true alleged fact.
I think this was subtly deceptive since I took FS to say that quite clearly the suffix meant something else when combined with the root 'fact', despite the origin and other forms of the suffix suggesting what it should mean:
Following the pattern described above, a factoid should be like a fact but not a fact and therefore untrue or only partially true or almost true. But factoid is used to mean a little, curious, trivial, interesting fact.

My position is that of a right Angle ;)
1. The suffix ~oid originally meant ‘like or sharing some characteristics’
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=-oid
2. When it got appended to ‘fact’, the resulting word got used to initially mean ‘like a fact’ in an ironic deprecatory sense
3. Because these were often spurious and short items as Bing notes, it subsequently picked up the connotation of ‘brief fact’
4. By retrofitting this has extended the denotative value of ~oid to include ‘small’, making it similar to ~ette
5. Although the majority of the usage panel are still mostly uncomfortable, it’s a change, it’s happening, and it’s a comparatively rare example of one you can actually observe in progress.

I may well be wrong, but if so it’ s a consistently wrong view! :)