factish

comparative more factish · superlative most factish

1. Similar to facts, but not necessarily factual; fact-like.

   And as Miller writes of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, its real bits are 'factish' rather than 'factual.'

   2006, Michael Haag, Veronica Haag, James McConnachie, The Rough Guide to the Da Vinci Code, page 224

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   This factish, leftish derivation of the old dictum, “Art is art precisely in that it is not Nature,” by wrongly interpreting the word Nature, utterly betrayed the master's poetic sense.

   1971, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Henry Sullivan, Genius and the Mobocracy, page 158

   all very abstract and not too consistent in view of Hardy's own stories, which were even at that time so seriously attacked, on one side by the realists because they were said to be too unreal, and on the other by the idealists because they were too nakedly factish.

   2007, Martin Ray, Thomas Hardy Remembered, page 119

2. Focused on fact rather than reason or speculation.

   There is no doubt a strong tendency to revolt against abstract reasoning. Human nature has a strong “factish” element in it.

   1876, The Fortnightly - Volume 19; Volume 25, page 223

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   To this advice may be added the reminder, contained in a word of Walter Bagehot's , that excepting in times of great excitement an audience begins to listen in a decidedly “factish” frame of mind.

   1910, Lindsay Todd Damon, Washington Webster and Lincoln, page 23

   She wanted to know where my youth had gone, how long at current address, what I had to go by, which people I held my life against, reasons for leaving whatever I might have left. But when I started to give her a factish rundown of some sort, keeping my palms up, hair-enshadowed sides down, her eyes went right out.

   2002, Gary Lutz, Stories in the Worst Way, page 108

plural factishes

1. human sciencesA scientific "fact" whose power is believed in, but which is ultimately a construction, just as fetishes are constructions believed to hold spiritual powers.

   The factish obliterates the binary between fact and fetish and, more importantly, between Africa and Europe.

   2013, Lucia Thesen, Linda Cooper, Risk in Academic Writing, page 249

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   Factishes fit well the emergent and networked vision of the world, because they stress the historical quality with which every acting entity is endowed with.

   2005, Monika A. Szumilak, Reconfiguring Spanish Subjects, page 93

   If what we have are not fetishes to be critiqued, but factishes that are hybrids that have complex effects, then we must exercise caution and care both in relation to critiquing and creating factishes.

   2012, Mike Michael, Reconnecting Culture, Technology and Nature, page 35