this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
571 points (97.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43940 readers
414 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Until recently the word "factoid" didn't mean a small bit of trivia. It meant something that sounded true or was accepted as a fact even though it was incorrect.
It's like the word asteroid. Aster means star, but an asteroid isn't a star, it can just look like one.
Yep! Learned that word in Dune books, was confused when I first saw it online meaning something entirely different.
Meme also suffered this fate, Used to mean an idea that was transmitted from person to person like a disease.
I think the meaning of AI has also become watered down recently.
That's definitely what it should mean. -oid means resembling or pertaining to, it's not a diminutive.
This sounds like a factoid