I find myself often winging it with “themself/themselves” and it seems to be like themselves is always colloquially correct when there are multiple preceding nouns you’re referring to…

Otherwise if there’s only one antecedent or whatever, its themself

Be gentle haha

  • ContrarianTrailEnglish
    132·
    17 days ago

    I’m not sure if I understood the question correctly, but ‘factoid’ is the most commonly misused word that I know of. It’s not a synonym for ‘fact’; it actually means the exact opposite. A factoid is a misconception so widely believed that people take it as a fact. You could even say that the word ‘factoid’ itself has become a factoid.

    Example of a factoid: The great wall of China can be seen from space. No it can’t.

    • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
      7·
      17 days ago

      Might have been an idea to factoid-check that claim in a dictionary before posting because it’s not really correct.

      Factoid (noun)

      (1) an insignificant or trivial fact.

      (2) something fictitious or unsubstantiated that is presented as fact, devised especially to gain publicity and accepted because of constant repetition.

      Factoids are to facts what humanoids are to humans. It does not mean the “exact opposite” at all.

      • BitSound@lemmy.world
        1·
        17 days ago

        From here:

        On occasion, a writer will coin a fine neologism that spreads quickly but then changes meaning. “Factoid” was a term created by Norman Mailer in 1973 for a piece of information that becomes accepted as a fact even though it’s not actually true, or an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print. Mailer wrote in Marilyn, “Factoids…that is, 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.” Of late, factoid has come to mean a small or trivial fact that makes it a contronym (also called a Janus word) in that it means both one thing and its opposite, such as “cleve” (to cling or to split), “sanction” (to permit or to punish) or “citation” (commendation or a summons to appear in court). So factoid has become a victim of novelist C.S. Lewis’s term “verbicide,” the willful distortion or deprecation of a word’s original meaning.

        • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
          1·
          17 days ago

          The obvious rejoinder: if Norman Mailer wanted his neologism to keep the meaning he intended for it, he should have been more careful about etymology. The “oid” suffix makes the new definition more logical than his own one.

          Counter-example: “homophobe”, which is illogical but has stuck anyway because it’s succinct.

          Interesting points otherwise.

      • ContrarianTrailEnglish
        1·
        17 days ago

        It’s the original meaning of the word, coined by Norman Mailer in 1973.

      • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
        1·
        17 days ago

        The second definition in your quote confirms that factoid can mean a widely-accepted false fact.

        (2) something fictitious or unsubstantiated that is presented as fact, devised especially to gain publicity and accepted because of constant repetition.