Editing Talk:1898: October 2017

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:"...or a true, but brief or trivial, item of news or information." [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.125|108.162.212.125]] 21:40, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 
:"...or a true, but brief or trivial, item of news or information." [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.125|108.162.212.125]] 21:40, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 
: Its USE has been to mean "tiny, usually insignificant, fact", but I've seen it pointed out many times that the "-oid" suffix means fake or not quite. Like a humanoid is something that appears human-like without being human. Thus "factoid" would mean "seems like a fact but isn't one". "A tomato is certainly a vegetable" would thus be a factoid. Or a statement that seems like fact but is actually debatable. However, while using "factoid" the way Randall is here would be inaccurate, I've never seen this word used any other way. It's used this way so often, I could see crowd-edited sources like Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary including this definition. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 03:59, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 
: Its USE has been to mean "tiny, usually insignificant, fact", but I've seen it pointed out many times that the "-oid" suffix means fake or not quite. Like a humanoid is something that appears human-like without being human. Thus "factoid" would mean "seems like a fact but isn't one". "A tomato is certainly a vegetable" would thus be a factoid. Or a statement that seems like fact but is actually debatable. However, while using "factoid" the way Randall is here would be inaccurate, I've never seen this word used any other way. It's used this way so often, I could see crowd-edited sources like Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary including this definition. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 03:59, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
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:: The -oid suffix means 'having the form of'.  By definition, a fact has the form of a fact, so must be factoid.  However, non-facts could also be factoids if they have the form of a fact (for example, if they are commonly repeated as if true). When [http://www.startrek.com/database_article/odo Odo] complains (as he often does) that he will never understand humanoids, he doesn't mean to exclude humans - they too are humanoid. Of course, it's slightly odd that he uses this term at all - having 'grown up' on Bajor, you might expect him to be more inclined to consider them 'Bajoranoid'. One might argue that he is in fact saying 'Bajoranoid', and the universal translator is translating it as 'humanoid', but that would seem to suggest that it is playing fast and loose with the translation, since the accurate translation into English would be, er, 'Bajoranoid'. I may have spent too much time thinking about this. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.155.32|162.158.155.32]] 12:49, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
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:: The -oid suffix means 'having the form of'.  By definition, a fact has the form of a fact, so must be factoid.  However, non-facts could also be factoids if they have the form of a fact (for example, if they are commonly repeated as if true). When ["http://www.startrek.com/database_article/odo"|Odo] complains (as he often does) that he will never understand humanoids, he doesn't mean to exclude humans - they too are humanoid. Of course, it's slightly odd that he uses this term at all - having 'grown up' on Bajor, you might expect him to be more inclined to consider them 'Bajoranoid'. One might argue that he is in fact saying 'Bajoranoid', and the universal translator is translating it as 'humanoid', but that would seem to suggest that it is playing fast and loose with the translation, since the accurate translation into English would be, er, 'Bajoranoid'. I may have spent too much time thinking about this. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.155.32|162.158.155.32]] 12:49, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 
:::I'll say a tomatoid would almost certainly be a vegetable with some striking similarities to a tomato, but whose grandparents  include perhaps a potato, some brussel's sprouts. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.86|162.158.88.86]] 10:47, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
 
:::I'll say a tomatoid would almost certainly be a vegetable with some striking similarities to a tomato, but whose grandparents  include perhaps a potato, some brussel's sprouts. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.86|162.158.88.86]] 10:47, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
 
::: Hmmm, your link seems to stop at the underscore, and doesn't show your link text. Way to go wiki! LOL! Until seeing the link in full while typing this, I had assumed you were talking about Data and I was confused about your talking about Bajor. :) (I fixed it, it wants a space between the address and the link text, not a pipe. It might have included the pipe and link text as part of the link and the other site threw it out as invalid?).
 
::: Hmmm, your link seems to stop at the underscore, and doesn't show your link text. Way to go wiki! LOL! Until seeing the link in full while typing this, I had assumed you were talking about Data and I was confused about your talking about Bajor. :) (I fixed it, it wants a space between the address and the link text, not a pipe. It might have included the pipe and link text as part of the link and the other site threw it out as invalid?).

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