This morning I spotted an interesting case of fact being used as a verb in a comment on a TikTok post, and thought I’d blog about it.
I can’t find the post in question again, but the comment went something like “Your facts are not facting”. Which probably means that the facts are not true, or the commenter doesn’t believe them.
I found another example of the verbification of fact in this post on Instagram, which includes the comment When the facts are not facting.
Here’s another example of facting used as a verb: “He was facting the news article for the evening broadcast.”
Facting can also be used as a noun meaning “The act of stating or presenting factual information”. For example, “She impressed everyone with her facting skills during the presentation.”
As an adjective, facting means “Pertaining to the existence of verifiable information or circumstances”. For example, “It is important to base decisions on facting evidence rather than assumptions.” [source].
According to Fast Slang:
“Facting is a term that has recently emerged in the online world, and it refers to the act of spreading false information or fake news with the intention of misleading people. The practice of facting is often used by individuals or groups who have an agenda to push or a narrative to promote, and they do so by creating and sharing content that appears to be factual but is actually completely fabricated.”
The word fact is usually used as a noun meaning something actual as opposed to invented; something which is real; or an objective consensus on a fundamental reality that has been agreed upon by a substantial number of experts, and so on.
It comes from Old French fact, from Latin factum (fact, deed, act, work, explot, etc), from factus (done, made), from faciō (to do, make, produce), from Proto-Italic *fakjō (to make) from Proto-Indo-European *dʰh₁k-yé-ti (make), from *dʰeh₁- (to do, put, place) [source].
Words from the same PIE roots include affair, affect, artificial, credible, deed, defect, divide, face, factor, faction, feast, perfect, verb, verify and many more in English [source].
The act of using a non-verb, particularly a noun, as a verb, is called verbing, verbalizing / verbalising, verbifying or verbification, and is quite common in English. Do other languages do this as much? [source].
Incidentally, a minor fact or item of trivia is a factlet [source], and a factette is a small snippet of true information, or a minor fact [source].
Factoid is generally used to refer to a minor fact, like factlet and factette, but can also mean “an inaccurate statement or statistic believed to be true because of broad repetition, especially if cited in the media.”
It was coined by American writer Norman Mailer and appeared in his 1973 book, Marilyn: A Biography, in which he defines factoids 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” [source].
This post has been thoroughly facted and fact checked, and is entirely factual, factful and factic, to the best of my knowledge. It contains no misfacts, nonfacts, pseudofacts or unfacts, and that’s a fact, as a matter of fact.
