Word.ws English Dictionary

factish

factish adjective: similar to facts, but not necessarily factual; fact-like.

Adjective

factish (comparative more factish, superlative most factish)

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

Noun

factish (plural factishes)

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

Examples of factish in a sentence

  • 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:
  • 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:

Forms of factish

Adjective
comparativemore factish
superlativemost factish
Noun
pluralfactishes

Origin of factish

From fact + -ish.

Blend of fact + fetish, coined by Bruno Latour.

Questions about factish

What does factish mean?
Factish means similar to facts, but not necessarily factual; fact-like.
How do you use factish in a sentence?
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.
What part of speech is factish?
Factish can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near factish in the dictionary

  1. factious
  2. factiously
  3. factiousness
  4. factiousnesses
  5. factis
  6. factish
  7. factishes
  8. factitial
  9. factitious
  10. factitious disorder imposed on another
  11. factitiously

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: factish (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “factish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/factish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.