Factitious

[Dr. Goodword]

• factitious •

Pronunciation: fæk-ti-shês • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: Artificial, fake, artificially rather than naturally created or produced, lacking authenticity.

Notes: Here is a word that is about to be lost between two other very similar words: fictitious and factious. Fictitious, of course, means "of fiction, not real". Factious means "broken into factions". The adverb for today's adjective is, as always, factitiously, and the noun, factitiousness.

In Play: Anything artificial or fake deserves today's word: "Wyatt Hertz is a flagrant hypochondriac who complains of myriad factitious maladies." Even emotions: "As a token of factitious sympathy for a man he actually hated, McGundy sent his boss flowers in the hospital."

Word History: Today's Good Word was Latin factitius "artificial", based on factus "elaborate, artistic", the past participle of facere "to do, make", the source of French faire, Italian fare, Portuguese fazer, and Spanish hacer "to do, make". Spanish (and English) hacienda also comes from the gerundive of this word; Latin facienda meant "things to be done". Facere devolved from the Proto-Indo-European root dhe- "to put, to set, to do", which also produced English do and deed, German tun, Russian delat' "to do, make", Lithuanian déti "to put", Polish dziać "to happen", and many more throughout the Indo-European languages. (We must now show a bit of unfactitious gratitude to our South African friend Chris Stewart for his recommendation of today's Good Word.)

[MTC]

"Factitious" has found its way into the psychiatric vocabulary. According to the Cleveland Clinic, "Factitious Disorder is a mental disorder in which a person acts as if he or she has a physical or mental illness when, in fact, he or she has consciously created their symptoms. The name factitious comes from the Latin word for 'artificial.'"

Perhaps the most colorful of the various types of factitious disorders is Munchausen's syndrome after Baron Von Munchausen an 18th century German officer who spun improbable tales such as riding on a cannon ball, etc. Google The Adventures of Baron von Munchausen for details. A 1989 movie inspired by the fabulist got a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes.

But, I digress....

[Perry Lassiter]

Good to hear from you again, MTC. To continue your digression, a worse form is Munchausen by proxy, in which a mother arranges for a child to be sick enough for hospitalization because she loves the attention. The TV doctor House had an episode about that.

My original intention was to say the definition fooled me as appearing counter-factual. I read the root as "fact" and would have deduced the opposite of its real meaning.

[gerwitz]

I was very disappointed to see my good friend artificial maligned in this way. While it is certainly true that artificial and fake are both synonyms of factitious, I believe they represent two distinct meanings.

Today's common use of artificial with the shared negative connotations of fake is very unfortunate, because it has left us without a good word to say "made by humans" in a positive light! Artisanal is a sad substitute.

[Perry Lassiter]

Gerwitz has a point. Especially as technology advances, artificial becomes neutral, balancing some bad fakes and some good creations. For a number of years now I've had to change my dislike of artificial flowers, because they no longer appear artificial. Rather they are often indistinguishable even up close. And bionics present artificial limbs that functions better and better as the science advances. We seldom even call them artificial anymore and use more technical terms.