fictitious (sp?)

[Tom Kysilko]

Back in the late '70s when I spent a lot of time in the university library
pretending to write a dissertation, I was a faithful reader of American
Speech and The New England Journal of Medicine.  "Factitious" was used in
the latter to describe symptoms manufactured by patients, by, for example,
injecting themselves with spit (ick!)
--Tom Kysilko

At 3/24/2003 11:00 PM -0500, Laurence Horn wrote:
>There's an established blend noun "faction" with just this meaning.
>Here's the AHD4:
>
>NOUN:
>1. A form of literature or filmmaking that treats real people or
>events as if they were fictional or uses real people or events as
>essential elements in an otherwise fictional rendition.
>2. A literary work or film that is a mix of fact and fiction.
>
>ETYMOLOGY:
>Blend of fact fiction.
>
>Last night I suspected "factition" was an on-line back-formation of
>"fictitious" that Michael Moore constructed in the (considerable)
>heat of the moment.  If "fictition" does catch on (there are only 48
>google hits), it may be because it works better than "faction", which
>of course was previously taken for another function.
>
>larry