factitious
adjective

- artificial rather than natural

- artificially created or developed rather than genuine; invented

- ​not real but created deliberately and made to appear to be true

- Insincere: lacking authenticity, sham, or forced

- not spontaneous or natural; engineered to appear real

factitious disorder 
noun (medical)

- a condition where someone consciously fakes, induces, or exaggerates physical or psychological symptoms to gain attention or sympathy

Cambridge Dictionary, Oxford Languages, Oxford Learner’s Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

The word factitious comes from Latin factīcius, meaning "made by art" or "artificial," which derives from factus, the past participle of facere ("to make" or "to do").

First recorded use: mid-17th century (around 1640s). It was borrowed directly from Latin into English, retaining its meaning of "artificially created" rather than naturally occurring.

The word has maintained remarkable consistency in meaning:
- Original Latin sense: something made by human skill or craft (as opposed to natural)
- Modern English sense: artificially created or developed; not natural or genuine; contrived

Related words from the same root:
- fact (something done or made)
- factor (one who makes or does)
- manufacture (made by hand: manu + facere)
- artifact (made by art: arte + factum)
- factotum (do everything: fac + totum)
- de facto (from the fact/deed)

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IS IT FAKE OR REAL?

A Short Guide to Recognising Manufactured Media

Deepfakes and re-edited clips are no longer exotic; they’re everywhere. Yet you can easily spot most of them with a few simple checks and a bit of healthy scepticism.

(1)  Look first at the language and the logic of the message
      - If the title screams “LEAVES reporter SPEECHLESS,” “DESTROYS the media,” or “THE TRUTH revealed,” it is trying to provoke you, not inform you.
      - Serious news outlets usually lead with topic, context, or a clear quote, not with a promised emotional payoff.
      - Vague, grandiose channel names with no clear affiliation (“visionary world,” “truth hub,” “global vision”) are a strong hint that you’re dealing with an aggregator rather than a newsroom.
      - A good rule of thumb: if the title tells you how to feel before you even watch, be wary.


(2)  Look at the visuals, not just the face
       - Real interviews show an environment: interviewer, microphones, room noise, occasional cuts to reaction shots.
       - A single, perfectly centred head, evenly lit, barely moving, against a smoothed or oddly blurred background suggests a cropped talk, a repackaged monologue, or heavy AI/post-processing.
       - Watch for “cardboard cut-out” moments: the outline of the face is too sharp, the background warps around hair or hands, or jewellery, glasses, or teeth seem to “swim” slightly when the speaker moves.
       - If it looks like a studio, but you never really see the room, treat it as a constructed scene until proven otherwise.

Helga & Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

all hat and no cattle, apocryphal, artificial, bogus, borrowed authority, canned, cardboard cut-out, chimerical, contrived, cooked up, counterfeit, deepfake (of meaning), dressed-up fiction, engineered, erroneous, ersatz, fabricated, FACTITIOUS, fake, feigned, fictive, fictional, gilded lily, hollow replica, imitation, inauthentic, invented, made-up, manufactured, mock, narrative without provenance, not the Real McCoy, phony, phony-baloney, plastic, polished façade, Potemkin display, pretended, pseudo, put-on, put-up job, sham, simulacrum, simulated, smoke and mirrors, specious, stitched-together narrative, synthetic, synthesised, trojan presentation, trumped-up, veneer of reality, window dressing

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a sentence today, say something like:

“Fortunately, it’s still relatively easy to identify FACTITIOUS content.”

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Please Support OWAD

On evenings and weekends, I research and write your daily OWAD newsletter together with Helga (my lovely wife and business partner) and our eagle-eyed daughter Jennifer. It remains FREE, AD-FREE, and ALIVE thanks to voluntary donations from appreciative readers.

If you aren’t already, please consider supporting us — even a small donation, equivalent to just 1-cup-of-coffee a month, would help us in covering expenses for mailing, site-hosting, maintenance, and service.

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Paul Smith
(OWAD Founder)