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In everyday talk, a factoid is a small piece of information that is fun to know but does not matter much — the kind of thing you drop into a chat. Quiz shows and social media love them. Though actually, the American writer Norman Mailer made this word in 1973 for something sharper: a “fact” that only became a fact because a magazine printed it. Not quite a lie, he said, but a made-up bit used to move people’s feelings. Careful writers still dislike the trivia sense, because -oid usually means “like the real thing, but not it”. So the same word now covers a cute little fact and a fake-looking fact. In casual speech it is almost always the cute one; in a serious essay it may be the other. Listen for which.
冷知識（原意其實是「看來像事實、卻是媒體造出來的說法」）
組成fact + -oid (“similar, but not the same”). Coined by Norman Mailer in 1973 in Marilyn: A Biography.
同家族的字
- factthe piece this word is built from
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
factoidnoun/ˈfæk.tɔɪd/
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An inaccurate statement or statistic believed to be true because of broad repetition, especially if cited in the media.
- Such hedging is necessitated by the lack of in-depth knowledge of the contents, which also gives free rein to the scripting of unsubstantiated factoids concerning the book.
- Wikipedia-derived factoids can be so important that there is a well-known feedback loop, called citogenesis, in which the mainstream news finds some claim made in a Wikipedia article, and publishes it (without citing Wikipedia). Then Wikipedia itself makes use of the news article. By means of this loop, an ultimately “sourceless” factoid gains a spurious authority.
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An interesting item of trivia; a minor fact.
- Given a large enough storehouse of words and a fine filter, would it be possible to see cultural change at the micro level, to follow minute fluctuations in human thought processes and activities? Tiny factoids, multiplied endlessly, might assume imposing dimensions.
- Don't parade in front of the audience spewing every factoid you know on your topic. Only share the right information for that exact moment with that specific audience.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。