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We can thank Norman Mailer for the word "factoid"; he coined the term in his 1973 book Marilyn, about Marilyn Monroe. In the book, Mailer explains that factoids are "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." In creating his coinage, Mailer relied on "-oid," a suffix that traces back to the ancient Greek word "eidos," meaning "appearance" or "form." Mailer followed in a long tradition when he chose "-oid"; English speakers have been making words from "-oid" since at least the late 16th century.

1 : an invented fact believed to be true because of its appearance in print

Examples

Printed on the back of each baseball card in Mikey’s collection was a chart showing the player’s statistics along with one or two interesting factoids about his career.

"Here's an interesting factoid: 'Mary Poppins' is the only Broadway show that debuted in the 2006-2007 theatrical season still in performance." -- From an Orlando Sentinel blog posting by Matt Palm, April 18, 2011