Ink Pen by Phil Dunlap for May 01, 2010

Hamhock’s annoid. That’s a fact.

Actually, Ham Hock, he’s a hemorrhoid.

Ham would make an excellent jock talk show host…

The 2004 American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition, has a long discussion of “factoid”. They give the basic meaning as referenced by Ralston (inaccurate information accepted as true), but they also recognize the newer, colloguial meaning as used by Hamhock (a somewhat interesting fact) but which is accepted by only 43% of their usage panel.

I’m a long-time believer in a language’s right to change, otherwise we’d all be speaking Anglo-Saxon. My prediction is that the newer meaning of “factoid” will take over with time and someday the original meaning will have become a trivia question, in other words, a factoid.

So when I told her I was at church, that’s a factoid?

pschearer: but we already have a word for a small, somewhat interesting fact: “trivia.” I have yet to see anything described as a “factoid” that couldn’t be described more accurately as trivia, so what’s the point of the word?

And if we put the “pseudo” in front of the “intellectual”, we get…wow, this really is fun looking up factuals in the dictionary.

I have no comment at this time.

I want to know what factoid pig had!

ElDo, have you ever seen “Babe”? Dan Gire of the Chicago Daily Herald called it “The Citizen Kane of talking-pig movies.”

(That’s actually not as left-handed a compliment as it sounds, considering that 1995 also saw the release of “Gordy”, which will forever be remembered only as “That other talking-pig movie.”)

You should check out “Babe.” Seriously good movie. If a talking-pig movie ends up with a “Best Picture” nomination (also “Best Writing” and “Best Direction” nods), you can bet it’s an exceptional talking-pig movie.