I only realized this myself decades after using the term factoid due to pages in highlights for kids.
may or may not be true.
Wikipedia has it as "an item of unreliable information that is repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact." after the original USofAmerica coinage by Norman Mailer.
In Commonwealth countries (Australia, Canada, UK) two decades past we used it on intelligence forums as the name for atomic snippets of information released by companies via stock exchanges, company reports, PR .. each nugget being an atomic fact like paragraph linked back to a source that asserted that fact to be true, but to be taken as potentially incorrect.
The intended meaning by Norman Mailer never took on in the states.
> In British English a “factoid” is something that looks true but isn't.
I responded that
In British English a “factoid” is something that looks true but may or may not be true.
.. there's a difference.
Jokes aside, what do we actually do in this scenario, when the same word has opposite meanings?
In my opinion, it’s always best to err on caution and use another word if possible (“short fact” instead?).
Because I have seen this factoid discussion before…
Language is the shared meaning between people, so if lots of people understand something the same way… then thats what the word means now
In the same way that if you want to predict which authors will be well known in 400 years, your best bet is on authors that we currently know from 400 years ago. Better to bet on Shakespeare and Aristotle, than e.e.cummings and T.S. Eliot
A word coined in the 1970s won’t be nearly as entrenched in its meaning with the public as an older word.
So, that’s my suspicion. New words are more prone to drift than old words
Guess it goes both ways... which is kinda worse.