Re:An amphibian fungus has become “the most deadly pathogen ...
by coldtea on Friday March 29, 2019 @05:35AM
(#19520221)
No, factoid can also be a real fact.
It doesn't get its "looks but isn't" from sharing the same ending as "humanoid". The same way an arachnoid is still an arachnid.
-oid just means "having the form of" (from the ancient Greek, oeides, meaning "of the type"/"belonging to the class"/"having the form of").
Sometimes this implies "looking like, but not being the thing" (like in humanoid, else we'd just say "human"), but in other words it just means "belonging to that family".
Factoids are meant to be small interesting tidbits (facts).
Quite often what are presented as factoids are bogus (e.g. urban legends reproduced by journalists to fill "Did you know that?" style columns).
Dictionary covers both meanings:
1) an item of unreliable information that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact.
2) a brief or trivial item of news or information.
But as you can see, the 1st meaning is not because of the "-oid" making such a meaning mandatory (else the world wouldn't have the second meaning, not to mention all the other words that end in -oid, but still don't imply a mere look-alike).
It doesn't get its "looks but isn't" from sharing the same ending as "humanoid". The same way an arachnoid is still an arachnid.
-oid just means "having the form of" (from the ancient Greek, oeides, meaning "of the type"/"belonging to the class"/"having the form of").
Sometimes this implies "looking like, but not being the thing" (like in humanoid, else we'd just say "human"), but in other words it just means "belonging to that family".
Factoids are meant to be small interesting tidbits (facts).
Quite often what are presented as factoids are bogus (e.g. urban legends reproduced by journalists to fill "Did you know that?" style columns).
Dictionary covers both meanings:
1) an item of unreliable information that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact.
2) a brief or trivial item of news or information.
But as you can see, the 1st meaning is not because of the "-oid" making such a meaning mandatory (else the world wouldn't have the second meaning, not to mention all the other words that end in -oid, but still don't imply a mere look-alike).