• dannoffs@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      If you’re a former English teacher you should be aware that language changes and while “factoid” was originally coined to mean a made up fact, the term is currently mostly used to refer to small inconsequential facts.

    • scutiger@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      A gunman doesn’t cease to be a gunman if he’s disarmed. Though he can’t be a gunman if he wasn’t armed in the first place.

    • pec@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Wouldn’t it be a pleonasm? Tautology is more about the logic realm, specifically about repeating an argument or a statement as it they were different. Here “inaccurate factoid” is merely inaccurate vocabulary.

    • Lvxferre
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      1 year ago

      There are four things wrong with your comment, that I wish that people did not bring to Lemmy.

      1. Failure to address what people are actually saying, on a discursive level, to focus on the specific words that they’re using to convey said discourse.
      2. The false belief that words and expressions have an intrinsic, immutable, “magically coded” meaning.
      3. Usage of emoticons and emojis to “shield” the speaker, without taking into account that they do not minimise the threatening act towards the hearer’s positive face.
      4. “As a”-based argumentation, as if the truth and/or moral value of a claim “magically” changed acc. to who does the claim.

      Focusing specially on #2, as it’s more relevant here. The word “factoid” is commonly associated with at least two meanings, and the def that you’re implying (“factoid” as something similar but not identical to a fact) is only one of them. The word is also used to convey “minor fact” or “trivia”, regardless of its truth value; as attested by Cambridge, Oxford #2, Wiktionary #2, Merriam-Webster #2; and OP is clearly assigning that meaning to “factoid” in the utterance, as it would not make sense to talk about an “inaccurate factoid” otherwise**.

      *I’m referring to Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory.

      **I’m referring to Gricean logic, specially the maxim of quantity.