It's the Word of the Day for March 1st.

Today's word is factoid, spelled F-A-C-T-O-I-D.

Factoid is a noun. It's 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. Here's the word used in a sentence

from Architectural Digest by Nashya Baker. Straight from the 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 Balbionello was featured in the Star Wars prequel films.

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, idos,

meaning appearance or form, follows in the pattern of the word humanoid.

Just as 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. With your word of the day,

I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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