factoid

/ˈfæk.tɔɪd/

Etymology

From fact + -oid (“similar, but not the same”); coined by American writer Norman Mailer in 1973 in Marilyn: A Biography, defined as "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".

Why this word is great

FACTOID — [Noun] An inaccurate statement or statistic believed to be true due to widespread repetition, or a minor piece of trivia. Coined by Norman Mailer in 1973 from fact ("something known to be true") + -oid ("resembling but not the same"), it is truth’s uncanny double. Unlike "fact" (which stands firm under scrutiny) or "trivia" (which flaunts its insignificance), a factoid thrives in the twilight between knowledge and myth. It is the claim that humans swallow eight spiders a year in their sleep, the insistence that the Great Wall is visible from space, or the confident recitation of a celebrity’s fabricated birthdate—each a tiny monument to the way falsehoods, repeated often enough, wear the comfortable guise of truth.

noun

An inaccurate statement or statistic believed to be true because of broad repetition, especially if cited in the media.“Such hedging is necessitated by the lack of in-depth knowledge of the contents, which also gives free rein to the scripting of unsubstantiated factoids concerning the book.”
An interesting item of trivia; a minor fact.“Given a large enough storehouse of words and a fine filter, would it be possible to see cultural change at the micro level, to follow minute fluctuations in human thought processes and activities? Tiny factoids, multiplied endlessly, might assume imposing dimensions.”