2022-03-14
ศัพท์ น่าสับสน - Set – F - Facility & faculty & Factoid
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Dictionary.com:
ออกเสียงfacility = “fuh-SIL-i-tee”
ออกเสียง faculty = “FAK-uhl-tee”
ออกเสียง factoid = “FAK-toid”
Dictioary of Problem Words and Expressions:
facility & faculty
These words are loosely interchangeable
when used to mean “ability,” “skill,” and “aptitude”:
”Henry’s facility in handling tools made him a competent mechanic.
His faculty for making friends brought him many customers.”
Facility has an added meaning of something
that makes possible an easy or fluent performance or action.
“Sue’s facility in playing the piano made her a welcome addition to our group.”
A facility is also a convenience or service:
“An additional washroom is a much-needed facility for this office.”
A faculty is a power or capability of mind or body:
“He used every faculty of his mind in wrestling with the problem.”
Also, faculty refers to a department of learning or collection of teachers:
”The faculty of this college is distinguished.”
Common Errors in English Usage Dictionary:
factoid
The “-oid” ending in English is normally added to a word
to indicate that an item is not the real thing.
A humanoid is not quite human.
Originally “factoid” was an ironic term
indicating that the “fact” being offered was not actually factual.
However, CNN and other sources have taken to
treating the “- oid” as ifit were a mere diminutive,
and using the term to mean “trivial but true fact.”
As a result, the definition of “factoid” is hopelessly confused
and it’s probably better to avoid using the term altogether.
Abused, Confused, & Misused Words by Mary Embree:
Facility = something that serves a specic function:
a parking facility;
= an easy-flowing manner:
facility of style;
= skill, aptitude, or dexterity:
He has a great facility with words.
Not to be confused with:
Falicity = great happiness; bliss;
= a skillful faculty:
Her felicity of expression is delightful.
Abused, Confused, & Misused Words by Mary Embree:
Faculty = a natural ability for a particular kind of action:
a faculty for choosing the right friends
Not to be confused with:
ability = a general word for power, native or acquired,
= enabling one to do things well:
an ability for math
capacity = actual or potential ability to perform or withstand:
a capacity for hard work
talent = native ability or aptitude in a special field:
a talent for art or music
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Choose the Right Synonym for faculty
Gift, Faculty, Aptitude, Bent, Talent, Genius, Knack
mean a special ability for doing something.
Gift often implies special favor by God or nature.
the gift of singing beautifully
Faculty applies to an innate or less often acquired ability
for a particular accomplishment or function.
a faculty for remembering names
Aptitude implies a natural liking for some activity
and the likelihood of success in it. a mechanical aptitude
Bent is nearly equal to Aptitude but it stresses inclination
perhaps more than specific ability.
a family with an artistic bent
Talent suggests a marked natural ability that needs to be developed.
has enough talent to succeed
Genius suggests impressive inborn creative ability.
has no great genius for poetry
Knack implies a comparatively minor
but special ability making for ease and dexterity in performance.
the knack of getting along
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Did you know that Norman Mailer coined the word factoid?
We can thank Norman Mailer for factoid:
he used the word in his 1973 book Marilyn (about Marilyn Monroe),
and he is believed to be the coiner of the word.
In the book, he explains that factoids are
"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."
Mailer's use of the -oid suffix
(which traces back to the ancient Greek word eidos,
meaning "appearance" or "form")
follows in the pattern of humanoid:
just as a humanoid appears to be human but is not,
a factoid appears to be factual but is not.
The word has since evolved so thatnow it most often
refers to things that decidedly are facts,
just not ones that are significant.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
History and Etymology for faculty
Middle English faculte "power, ability, field of knowledge,
branch of learning at a university," borrowed from Anglo-French faculté,
borrowed from Medieval Latin facultāt-, facultās
(Latin, "power, ability, opportunity, quantity available"),
from Latin *faklis, earlier form
of facilis "easy, accommodating" + -tāt-, -tās -TY
— more at FACILE
NOTE:
Latin facultās presumably developed
from an original *faklitāts (via *fakl̥tāts > *fakiltāts > facultās),
and hence is a doublet of facilitās "quality of being easily performed"
(see FACILITY),
a derivative formed after facilis had assumed
its attested form (with *-klis > -cilis).
The difference in meaning between the two derivatives
suggests the original adjective *faklis may have meant
something like "possessing the power, able"
(whence "easily done," conforming to other adjectives in -ilis).
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Usage Notes
‘Faculty’ and ‘Facility’: A School of Thought
Learn these, and you can do anything.
The nouns faculty and facility differ by only a couple of letters,
and are similar in other respects as well.
Each has a number of senses,
and each ultimately derives from the same word, the Latin facilis (“easy”).
Faculty might make us
think of the body of educators that work in a school,
and facility might make us
think of a place or feature within the school
that makes something possible to do
—such as a learning facility or athletic facility, or a restroom,
as it refers to when used in its polite-sounding plural form
(“asked to use the facilities”).
But both words also have senses
pertaining to the ability to do something.
Faculty is defined as “ability or power” with specific senses
denoting innate or acquired ability,
an inherent capability or function, or a natural aptitude.
You can speak of one’s faculty of sight or hearing, for example.
When speaking of an ability or aptitude,
faculty suggests a basic competence:
Faculty might make us think of the body of educators
that work in a school, and
facility might make us think of a place or feature
within the school that makes something possible to do
—such as a learning facility or athletic facility, or a restroom,
as it refers to when used in its polite-sounding plural form
(“asked to use the facilities”).
But both words also have senses pertaining to the ability to do something.
Faculty is defined as “ability or power” with specific senses
denoting innate or acquired ability, an inherent capability or function, or a natural aptitude.
You can speak of one’s faculty of sight or hearing, for example.
When speaking of an ability or aptitude,
faculty suggests a basic competence:
Facility stresses the ability to do something with an ease or comfort
that others might not possess.
You may have a facility for adding numbers quickly, for example.
Here are some other examples:
Just weeks into her term,
[Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] has gained 2.4 million followers,
eclipsing Speaker Nancy Pelosi at 2 million followers.
But the party will have to grapple with
whether the New York Democrat’s surge in Twitter followers
grew out of her facility with the platform or the force of her ideas.
— Emily Kopp, Roll Call, 17 Jan. 2019
Burke, an emergent director in Chicago,
does not yet have a deep bench of work.
But if you go and see “Bitter Earth,”
you’ll intuit his visual sophistication and his facility for sculpting his actors;
there is more interesting direction going on here
that you see in the work of other, far louder, directors.
— Chris Jones, The Chicago Tribune, 9 Nov. 2018
But there are times when faculty is used for such an instance,
particularly when the ability seems natural:
When he tells his story, Gautam is sure to emphasize his good luck
along with his hard work and determination.
But he also clearly has a faculty for winning people over.
— Melody Schreiber, NPR.org, 21 Sept. 2018
It is worth noting that one can have a faculty and a facility
for doing the same thing. Having a faculty for speech
means you can communicate by enunciating words
and stringing them together.
But having a facility for speech suggests that
you can speak with a particular eloquence,
the kind that might hold an audience’s attention.
Because facility and faculty are similar in appearance
and comparable in meaning,
writers have occasionally played the two off each other:
"In your own case," said I,
"from all that you have told me, it seems obvious that
your faculty of observation and your peculiar facility
for deduction are due to your own systematic training."
— Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter,” 1893
Dr. Watson’s line demonstrates the distinction
between facility and faculty with near perfection.
The ability to observe is one that most people naturally possess,
but Sherlock Holmes’ powers of deduction are not shared by most people
—evidenced by Watson describing them as “peculiar.”
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Word History
Are 'Factoids' the Same as 'Facts'?
Factoids are invented facts, or facts that are real but trivial
It can be difficult to say with any certainty
whether or not a particular author has coined a word,
something that does not stop many people from claiming that this,
in too many cases to count, is exactly what happened.
Perhaps we take comfort in the notion, however misguided it may be,
that our language was largely created by the dedicated efforts
of a small group of intelligent men and women,
rather than the spectacularly messy, perpetually inchoate,
and blundering process that it actually is.
We are inclined to favor certainty over ambiguity in many areas of life,
and have a difficult time coming to terms with the fact
that the answer to “who created that word”
will almost invariably be “nobody knows.”
That being said, there appears to be a fairly good chance
that Norman Mailer coined the word factoid.
Of course, there is always the possibility
that someone else used this word before he did,
or that it existed in spoken form,
and he was simply the first person to offer it up in published form,
but if so, such evidence has not yet been uncovered.
The earliest record of factoid comes in 1973,
in Marilyn, a book that was a combination of photographs
of Marilyn Monroe and biographical text provided by Mailer.
Shortly after using the word Mailer helpfully added an explanation:
“...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.”
Since its appearance in Mailer’s writing,
factoid has taken on an additional meaning,
“a briefly stated and usually trivial fact.”
It hails from a long line of words
created through adding the suffix -oid,
which comes from the ancient Greek eidos,
meaning “appearance” or “form."
These words can be formed
by employing -oid as either a noun suffix
or as an adjective suffix,
and most of them
are of a decidedly technical or scientific nature.
They give us words for such concepts as “shaped like a spine”
(acanthoid), “like clay” (argilloid), or “resembling
or related to the Scombridae” (scomboid).
Now, a word such as scomboid
may not immediately seem like a useful addition to your vocabulary,
but the Scombridae encompasses an order of fishes,
which include such varieties as the mackerel,
so if you’ve ever had occasion to say that someone resembled a mackerel,
but lacked the words with which to do so, you are now better prepared.
Many of these scientific words are obscure to all
but the specialists in whose fields they occur,
but there are a handful that have entered everyday life,
But in addition to creating these scientific terms,
-oid has been used, particularly since the mid-twentieth century,
to fashion words that are far more informal.
It has served as the finishing syllable for schizoid and sleazoid.
Considering that factoid is probably less than 50 years old,
it has been remarkably successful in
the extent to which it has become part of our language.
This may be due to the fact that both senses of the word
—the “invented fact” and the “trivial fact”
—are useful things to have a word for,
and English has no other candidates readily available
to describe them (despite the efforts of some,
factlet never really caught on as a word for “an unimportant fact”).
So the next time you find yourself in need of a factoid
and have none at hand, you may rely on the history of the word itself,
using it, we hope, in the secondary sense of “trivial fact"
—because we promise, we're not making this up.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language:
fac·toi′dal adj.
Usage Note: The suffix -oid normally means
"resembling, having the appearance of."
Thus, factoid originally referred to a claim that appears reliable
or accurate, often because it has been repeated so frequently
that people assume it is true.
The word still has this meaning for many writers and readers;
in our 2013 survey, 59 percent of the Usage Panel accepted it
in the sentence
The editorial writer relied on numerous factoids that have long been discredited.
But factoid is also often used to mean a brief,
somewhat interesting fact,
and this sense has become common in recent decades.
Some 64 percent of the Panel accepted this usage in the sentence
Each issue of the magazine begins with a list of factoids,
like how many pounds of hamburger were consumed in Texas last month.
As the ballot results indicate, neither usage is overwhelmingly approved.
If you use the word factoid, be sure the sentence makes it clear
whether you are referring to a spurious claim, on the one hand,
or an isolated, trivial, or mildly intriguing fact, on the other.
