I had a roller coaster of emotions reading that comment. It began with "factoid" which immediately triggered in me the same consternation in you, not that I would have posted about it...,
Then I read on about injecting frogs with urine and thought he was retelling an African urban legend. I was impressed with the tale being prefaced with a "factoid" which would be a correct use!
Then I realized it was actually true. But at that point my dismay in the incorrect use of "factoid" after all was completely dwarfed by my shock that injecting frogs with human urine really did determine pregnancy.
>Then I realized it was actually true. But at that point my dismay in the incorrect use of "factoid" after all was completely dwarfed by my shock that injecting frogs with human urine really did determine pregnancy.
That dismay was misplaced. Factoid was used correctly (and can mean both real and fake information -- see my response above).
And X-oid doesn't imply "looks like X but isn't" in general. In most cases it means "in the family of X things" (as per the original etymology).
It's just that some word, like "humanoid" are more useful when referring to non-humans (else we could just say human). Whereas there are many types of trapezoids (for example), there are only one humanity. So our uses for humanoid would either be as a synonym for human (useless), or as meaning "human-like" which makes sense only to apply to non-humans (e.g. aliens, robots, etc).
Eh, it's become acceptable, sure. It's the age old prescriptivist vs descriptivist debate. That same Merriam Webster link you posted also includes, e.g., a definition of "literally" as "figuratively" and our friend "in actuality".
Basically, things are "wrong" for a while, then they pick up steam, and they become right. I suppose "factoid" might have overcome the hurdle and become accepted, but the old stodgy rules are still worth knowing about if you have to write, e.g., an article in the NYTimes or something.
>Eh, it's become acceptable, sure. It's the age old prescriptivist vs descriptivist debate. That same Merriam Webster link you posted also includes, e.g., a definition of "literally" as "figuratively" and our friend "in actuality".
The Oxford dictionary sported the secondary definition of the literally since 1903 -- the use is much older. After over a century of common use and lexicographic registration, I don't think it fits into the prescriptivist vs descriptivist debate anymore (that would hold for more modern mistakes, not century-old established language -- do those people also argue that "awesome" e.g. is something that inspires dread, as per the original meaning of awe?).
Or, rather, the dictionary shows that it has been used incorrectly for at least a few years. Knowing what the ending -oid means clearly shows the usage wasn't correct.
"I could care less" is also "correct" according to your criterion.
>Or, rather, the dictionary shows that it has been used incorrectly for at least a few years. Knowing what the ending -oid means clearly shows the usage wasn't correct.
Or you don't know what -oid means either.
Oid doesn't strictly mean "looking like but not being X". Some words ending in -oid can mean that, but generally just means "having the form of X, belonging to the class of X" etc. From the ancient Greek -oides.
Dictionary again:
-oid. a suffix meaning “resembling,” “like,” used in the formation of adjectives and nouns (and often implying an incomplete or imperfect resemblance to what is indicated by the preceding element)
Note the "often", not always.
And not at all mandatory at the original ancient Greek -oeides where -oid was adopted from, for math, zoology, medicine, etc. It means both "likeness" (so alike, but not X), and "form" (belonging to the family of things with X form).
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 wasn't that I had no idea what -oid meant (humanoid etc. made it fairly obvious), it was just that seeing it spelled out explicitly made me make a connection I hadn't before. Similarly with Android -- never realized it's andro (man) + [o]id.
